
v A WEEK 
THE CONCORD 




Class ^"7^. 

Book - Up J sS3 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND 
MERRIMACK RIVERS 



WORKS OF HENRY D. THOREAU 

Cape Cod 

3 iS pages, 33 full-page illustrations 

The Maine Woods 

423 pages, 33 full-page illustrations 

Walden 

440 pages, 33 full-page illustrations 

A Week on the Concord and Merri- 
mack Rivers 
4Q2 pages, 33 full-page illustrations 

Introductions and photographic 
illustrations by Clifton Johnson 

Each, cloth, 8<vo. By mail, $2.20 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
New York 



A WEEK ON 
THE CONCORD AND 
MERRIMACK RIVERS 

BY 

HENRY D. THOREAU 

Author of "Walden," "The Maine Woods," 
"Cape Cod," etc. 

illustrated by 
CLIFTON JOHNSON 




NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1911, 
By Thomas Y. Crowelt, Company. 

Published, September, 1911. 






THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



2CI.A2952S4 



Where'er thou saiVst who sailed with me 
Though now thou climbest loftier mounts, 
And fairer rivers dost ascend, 
Be thou my Muse, my Brother — . 



I am bound, 1 am bound, for a distant shore, 
By a lonely isle, by a far Azore, 
There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek, 
On the barren sands of a desolate creek. 



/ sailed up a river with a pleasant wind, 
New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find ; 
Many fair reaches and headlands appeared, 
And many dangers were there to be feared; 
But when I remember where I have been, 
And the fair landscapes that I have seen, 
THOU seemest the only permanent shore. 
The cape never rounded, nor wandered o'er. 



INTRODUCTION 

IN my foreword to the several preceding vol- 
umes in this illustrated edition of Thoreau 
I have noted various phases of his life, but 
there is much else that is of interest, and the 
present preface, in further commenting on his 
characteristics, simply supplements, without rep- 
etition, what I have previously written. 

Thoreau's racial ancestry included a mingling 
of the French, Scotch, and English. John 
Thoreau, the nature-lover's grandfather, emi- 
grated to New England from the Isle of Jersey 
about 1773, and became a successful Boston 
merchant. It was only natural that Thoreau's 
father should be bred to a mercantile life; but 
his business career in the city ended in failure. 
When his son Henry was born he was "carrying 
on" a Concord farm. This farm belonged to 
his wife's mother, who had inherited it from 
her second husband, Jonas Minott, and thus it 
happened that the famous author's birthplace 
was the Minott house on the Virginia Road. 
The house was of a type common in New Eng- 
land at that period, with gray, unpainted boards, 
and a grassy, unfenced door-yard. It was some- 
what isolated, for the Virginia Road was only 

v 



vi INTRODUCTION 

a winding country by-way on the outskirts of 
the town; but round about were pleasant, sunny 
meadows, and in front ran a good-sized brook. 

Thoreau's father removed to Chelmsford, ten 
miles north, in Henry's infancy, and three years 
later to Boston. He did not thrive in either 
place, and in 1823 was back in Concord where 
he engaged in pencil-making. Thenceforth he 
led a plodding, unambitious, and respectable 
life in Concord village. He became moderately 
prosperous, and at his death left at least a com- 
petency to his family. 

Thoreau was fond of out-of-door life from his 
boyhood, and was always specially attracted by 
the streams and ponds and woods. At the age 
of sixteen he entered Harvard College, where 
he shunned making acquaintances and lived in 
rigid seclusion. He graduated in 1837, and 
with characteristic frugality saved five dollars 
by refusing his diploma. His opinion of the 
benefits conferred by his four years at Harvard 
seems not to have been very flattering. "Edu- 
cation," he says, "often makes a straight-cut 
ditch out of a free meandering brook." But it 
could scarcely be claimed that it had that effect 
on him. 

While attending college he began to collect 
Indian relics, and was a diligent student of 
natural history. His expertness in finding 
Indian relics in later years became proverbial. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Once, when out walking, a friend asked him 
where Indian arrow-heads could be found. 

"Everywhere," he replied, and stooped down 
and picked up one. 

As Thoreau and his brother and two sisters 
grew up they all took up school-teaching, and 
each displayed peculiar gifts in that profession. 
He himself, after his college course, began 
teaching in his home town. He gave notice 
that there would be no flogging in his school, 
and that instead he would talk morals as a 
substitute. At the end of a fortnight a deacon 
who was one of the school committee visited the 
school and told him that he must use the ferule 
or the pupils would be spoiled. So that day, 
after school, Thoreau flogged six pupils. But 
this was against his conscience, and he informed 
the committee that he should no longer serve 
them if they interfered with his methods of 
discipline. 

After teaching for three years he turned to 
other employments, yet he only tied himself to 
these as much as his own simple needs required. 
His income from authorship was never more 
than a few hundred dollars a year, and the 
amount was not half enough in most years to 
supply even his few wants. He would not be 
dependent on others, and therefore eked out a 
subsistence by gardening, fence-building, white- 
washing, carpentering and kindred pursuits. In 



viii INTRODUCTION 

everything he undertook he showed a patient, 
conscientious industry, and took pride in the 
quality of his workmanship. He had a knack 
for raising the best melons, planting the orchard 
with the choicest trees, and for doing any odd 
jobs that needed mechanical ingenuity. 

For general society, or for mixing with throngs 
Thoreau had no inclination. "I would rather," 
said he, "sit on a pumpkin and have the seat 
all to myself than be crowded on a velvet 
cushion." 

He would sometimes dart through a hedge or 
over a neighbor's back fence to escape an en- 
counter which meant boredom. Very few were 
acceptable companions to him on his walks. In 
response to a friend who invited him to spend 
a few weeks at the friend's "island lodge," 
Thoreau wrote: "Such are my engagements to 
myself that I dare not promise to wend your 
way." 

The closest of his early companions was his 
brother John, a sunny and serene soul for whom 
he had a great affection. This brother's early 
death in 1842 was a loss which moved Thoreau 
deeply. 

Of his later friendships, that with Emerson 
was perhaps the most intimate and important. 
A close acquaintance between the two began in 
1837, and Thoreau was fully admitted into that 
inner circle of which Emerson, Alcott, and Mar- 



INTRODUCTION ix 

garet Fuller were the leaders. In the spring of 
1841 he became an inmate of Mr. Emerson's 
house, and Emerson wrote concerning this ar- 
rangement: "He is to have his board, etc., for 
what labor he chooses to do; and he is thus far 
a great benefactor and physician to me, for he 
is an indefatigable and skillful laborer." 

From the year of his graduation down almost 
to the time of his death he kept a journal which 
recorded his thoughts and experiences. In it 
he noted the temperature of springs and ponds, 
the tints of the morning and evening skies, the 
flowering and fruitage of plants, the habits of 
birds and other animals, and indeed every as- 
pect of nature both small and great. Much of 
it is dry detail, but there are constantly recurring 
strokes of beauty in what he says, and often a 
delightful originality of thought and piouancy 
of expression. 

He never crossed the ocean, and saw only a 
very limited portion of his homeland. Even 
Boston, only twenty miles distant, was seldom 
visited, except as he needed to pass through it 
in going elsewhere. He says: "The only room 
in Boston which I visit with alacrity, is the 
Gentlemen's Room at the Fitchburg Depot, 
where I wait for the cars, in order to get out of 
town. It is a paradise to the Parker House, for 
no smoking is allowed, and there is far more 
retirement." 



x INTRODUCTION 

Again he says : " When it was proposed to me 
to go abroad, rub off some of the rust, and better 
my condition in a worldly sense, I feared lest my 
life would lose some of its homeliness. If these 
fields, and streams and woods, and the simple 
occupations of the inhabitants should cease to 
interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth 
would atone for the loss." 

Admiring friends offered to carry him at 
their own cost to the Yellowstone River, to the 
West Indies, to South America; but he always 
refused. 

Yet however little he saw of distant places, 
he was a great traveller in the neighborhood of 
Concord. Every day he was afield, and no 
other writer of modern times has been so much 
awake and abroad at night, or has described 
better the phenomena of darkness and of moon- 
light. He could make his way unerringly 
through the gloomiest woods at night where 
most men would have been lost at mid-day. 
His keenness of scent was like a dog's. The 
time of day he could tell by the height of the 
sun; and he has said of the plants in a certain 
Concord swamp that he thought they would 
enable him to estimate the time of year within 
two days. He had a great fancy for huckle- 
berries, wild strawberries, chestnuts, acorns, 
and wild apples; and sometimes he would cut 
a square of birch-bark, fashion it into a rustic 



INTRODUCTION xi 

basket, and fill it with the treasures he had dis- 
covered to carry home. 

Unquestionably, he injured his naturally ro- 
bust health by the way he pursued his out-door 
studies, and the hardships he imposed on him- 
self. He was endowed with great strength of 
body and limb, and increased these physical 
advantages by a temperate youth and by 
manual labor, in which he took much pleasure; 
but he could not be moderate in those pursuits 
to which his taste inclined. He exposed himself 
in his journeys and night encampments to cold 
and hunger and changes of weather such as no 
one could brave with impunity. 

A fellow townsman, writing in 1855, describes 
him as "a little under size, with a huge nose, 
bluish-gray eyes, brown hair, and a ruddy, 
weather-beaten face, which reminds me of some 
shrewd and honest animal's — some retired, 
philosophical woodchuck, or magnanimous fox. 
He dresses very plainly, wears his collar turned 
over, and often an old dress-coat, broad in 
the skirts, and by no means a fit. He walks 
about with a brisk, rustic air and never seems 
tired." 

His hands and feet were rather large, and his 
shoulders were noticeably sloping. The weakest 
feature of his face was a receding chin. By 
choice he wore plain working clothes, and gen- 
erally old ones. The fashion of his garments 



xii INTRODUCTION 

gave him no concern, and was often out-of-date 
and even grotesque. 

He was an untiring worker and stooped from 
his devotion to desk and book. But his wild 
instincts were never so dulled by his booklore 
but that he knew how to coax the partridge to 
feed at his door, and the shy woodmice to scurry 
up his sleeve and share his bread. 

He was fond of pets, and appreciated in 
particular his sister's kittens, with which he 
would play by the half-hour. 

The companionship of children was enjoy- 
able to him, and at the homes where he visited 
he would tell these little folks stories, or mystify 
them with juggler tricks, or pop corn for them in 
the winter evenings, using for a popper an old 
brass warming-pan brought from the garret. 
In the spring he used to make willow whistles, 
and in the summer he made trumpets out of the 
stems of squash leaves. Sometimes he took the 
children huckleberrying, or out on the river in 
his boat, and he added interest and value to 
such excursions by showing his youthful com- 
rades many of nature's wonders. 

After the public began to know something 
about his Walden life he had frequent lecture 
engagements. Until then, he had supported 
himself ever since he left college chiefly by the 
work of his hands. Yet in spite of this new 
source of income he continued to do some sur- 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

veying, and occasionally devoted time to manual 
labor. It was, in fact, one of the serious doctrines 
of the Transcendentalists that each person should 
perform his quota of hand-work. Hence Alcott, 
Channing, Hawthorne, and the rest took their 
turn at wood-chopping, hay-making, plowing, 
etc. Even Emerson trimmed his own orchard, 
and sometimes assisted in raking hay and hoe- 
ing corn. 

Thoreau first became the author of a printed 
book when his Week on the Concord and Merri- 
mack Rivers was published. Alcott, to whom 
he read portions in manuscript at the hermitage 
beside Walden Pond, says: "The book is purely 
American, fragrant with the life of New England 
woods and streams, and could have been written 
nowhere else;" and he expressed great eager- 
ness to see it in print. However, the manuscript 
went from publisher to publisher, and was only 
accepted at last on condition that the author 
should be responsible for the expense of issuing 
it. So Thoreau borrowed the necessary funds, 
and it appeared in 1849. 

The book is a mixture of humor and wisdom, 
founded on broad reading, deep thought, and a 
very unusual love for Nature and insight into 
her ways. To take it for a steady diet and read 
it consecutively from cover to cover would be 
tedious to most persons, but for literary browsing 
the book is a gem. It abounds in suggestion and 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

charm, and, like all of Thoreau's books, has 
come to be accepted as an open-air classic. 
Nevertheless, back in 1849, in spite of some 
complimentary notices, the first edition was not 
a success. Four years passed, and Thoreau was 
asked to remove the unsold copies from the 
cellar of the publishing house. 

About this time he wrote to a friend: "I have 
been almost constantly in the fields surveying 
of late. It is long since I have spent so many 
days so profitably in a pecuniary sense; so un- 
profitably in a more important sense. I have 
earned a dollar a day for seventy-six days past. 
This is instead of lecturing, which has not 
offered of late, to pay for that book I printed." 

Two hundred and fifteen had been sold, about 
a third as many more had been given away, and 
the rest were shipped to the author. When he 
received them he confided to his diary that he 
had a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, 
over seven hundred of which he had written 
himself. 

Things have changed since then. Now all 
that he wrote is treasured as the legacy of a 
prophet and a poet. 

The boat in which the trip on the Concord 
and Merrimack was made later became the 
property of Hawthorne, and is mentioned by 
him in his Mosses from an Old Manse. The 
day after Hawthorne bought the boat he took 



INTRODUCTION xv 

a lesson from Thoreau in paddling it. Appar- 
ently he was not a very apt pupil, for he says: 
"The boat seemed to be bewitched, and turned 
its head to every point of the compass except the 
right one. I suspect she has not yet transferred 
her affections from her old master to her new 
one. 

The years passed on, until at length 
Thoreau's health began to fail, and in 1861 he 
went to Minnesota; but the climate there did 
not afford the hoped-for benefit, and he soon 
returned to Concord. After it became evident 
that he had not long to live he said the idea of 
death did not trouble him. His thoughts had 
entertained him all his life and did still. When 
he had wakeful nights he would ask his sister 
to arrange the furniture so as to make fantastic 
shadows on the wall. 

He considered occupation not less necessary 
for the sick than for those in health, and he 
accomplished a vast amount of labor in his last 
months preparing papers for the press, working 
as long as he could hold a pencil in his trembling 
fingers. No murmur or complaint escaped him, 
and he was cheerful to the end. His room was 
made fragrant by the gifts of flowers from young 
and old. Fruit, too, of all kinds that the season 
afforded was sent to him, and the townspeople 
sought in every way to minister to his comfort. 
Only two hours before he passed away Judge 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Hoar called with a bouquet of hyacinths fresh 
from his garden, which Thoreau smelled and 
said he liked. 

He died on the 6th of May, 1862, and a few 
days later he was given a public funeral from 
the parish church. His grave is in Concord's 
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery within a few rods of 
the graves of the rest of that wonderful Con- 
cord galaxy — Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, and 
Channing. 

To quote the words of Emerson spoken at his 
funeral: "A truth-speaker he, a friend, knowing 
not only the secret of friendship, but almost 
worshipped by those few who resorted to him 
as their confessor and prophet, and knew the 
deep value of his mind and great heart." 

The pictures for this edition were made at the 
very end of August to correspond with the time 
of year that Thoreau made his trip. Naturally 
the aspect of the river has changed in some 
ways since 1839. The embryo manufacturing 
towns of that day have expanded enormously, 
the dams are higher so that the backwater has 
obliterated certain of the lesser falls, and the 
picturesque canal-boat traffic is only a memory. 
The entire region is less primitive, yet the 
country as viewed from the stream, whether 
you are on the Concord or the Merrimack, 
presents for the most part the same appearance 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

it did to Thoreau. You find that the varied trees, 
and flowers, and berries, the wild creatures, and 
the fishermen almost duplicate what he describes. 
Indeed, had he lived now instead of then I think 
he might go over the same route and produce a 
book that would not be essentially different 
from the one he did write. He remarked then 
how near the wild in nature was to be found to 
the long-settled towns and busy marts of men; 
and even yet in that populous New England 
manufacturing district hints of wildness abound 
and Thoreau would not lack inspiration. 

CLIFTON JOHNSON. 
Hadley, Mass. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Concord River 1 

Saturday 11 

Sunday 47 

Monday 141 

Tuesday 220 

Wednesday 293 

Thursday 372 

Friday 417 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Landing-place on the Merrimack . Frontispieces 

OPPOSITE PAGE 

Concord Meadows 6 V 

The Bridge at the Battleground .... 14 "" 

Ball's Hill 20" 

A Billerica Bridge 42 v 

Billerica Meeting-house 48 v 

The Road to Carlisle 56 v 

Above Billerica Falls . 70 ^ 

Above Pawtucket Falls 92 

The Newburyport "Chain Bridge" .... 102 ■ 

The Merrimack at Lawrence 114 

Southern End of Wicasuck or Tyng's Island 132 * 

At the Horseshoe Bend 148 ^ 

Mt. Uncannunuc 174 ^ 

On the Hudson Shore opposite Nashua . . 19S 

The Old Dunstable Graveyard 208 </ 

In Litchfield Village 240 i/ 

Plum Island 246 "' 

Looking up the River from Cromwell's Falls 256 v 

At Thornton's Ferry 268 ^ 



xxii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

OPPOSITE PAGE 

The Mouth of Nanticook Brook .... 278 v 

Moore's Falls 288 

The Stark Monument in Manchester . . 316 v 

Lake-like Expanse North of Amoskeag . . 322 

By the Waterside 346 v 

Straight Reach of River below Hooksett . 364 5 

The Pinnacle 378 

Hooksett Falls 394 "' 

A Glimpse of Litchfield 404 i 

Souhegan River 418 <■ 

Near the Mouth of Pennichook Brook . . 438 ■ 

The Merrimack opposite the Middlesex Locks 452 

Rowing Homeward 486 • 



A WEEK ON THE 

CONCORD AND MERRIMACK 

RIVERS 



CONCORD RIVER 

"Beneath low hills, in the broad interval 
Through which at will our Indian rivulet 
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, 
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, 
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees, 
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell." 

— Emerson. 

THE Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, 
though probably as old as the Nile or 
Euphrates, did not begin to have a place 
in civilized history, until the fame of its grassy 
meadows and its fish attracted settlers out of 
England in 1635, when it received the other but 
kindred name of Concord from the first planta- 
tion on its banks, which appears to have been 
commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony. 
It will be Grass-ground River as long as grass 
grows and water runs here; it will be Concord 
River only while men lead peaceable lives on its 
banks. To an extinct race it was grass-ground, 
where they hunted and fished, and it is still 
perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who 
own the Great Meadows, and get the hay from 
year to year. "One branch of it," according to 



2 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the Historian of Concord, for I love to quote so 
good authority, "rises in the south part of Hop- 
kin ton, and another from a pond and a large 
cedar swamp in Westborough," and flowing 
between Hopkinton and Southborough, through 
Framingham, and between Sudbury and Way- 
land, where it is sometimes called Sudbury 
River, it enters Concord at the south part of 
the town, and after receiving the North or Assa- 
beth River, which has its source a little further 
to the north and west, goes out at the north- 
east angle, and flowing between Bedford, and 
Carlisle, and through Billerica, empties into the 
Merrimack at Lowell. In Concord it is, in 
summer, from four to fifteen feet deep, and from 
one hundred to three hundred feet wide, but in 
the spring freshets, when it overflows its banks, 
it is in some places nearly a mile wide. Between 
Sudbury and Wayland the meadows acquire 
their greatest breadth, and when covered with 
water, they form a handsome chain of shallow 
vernal lakes, resorted to by numerous gulls and 
ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge, between 
these towns, is the largest expanse, and when 
the wind blows freshly in a raw March day, 
heaving up the surface into dark and sober 
billows or regular swells, skirted as it is in the 
distance with alder swamps and smoke-like 
maples, it looks like a smaller Lake Huron, and 
is very pleasant and exciting for a landsman to 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 3 

row or sail over. The farm-houses along the 
Sudbury shore, which rises gently to a con- 
siderable height, command fine water prospects 
at this season. The shore is more flat on the 
Wayland side, and this town is the greatest loser 
by the flood. Its farmers tell me that thousands 
of acres are flooded now, since the dams have 
been erected, where they remember to have seen 
the white honeysuckle or clover growing once, 
and they could go dry with shoes only in sum- 
mer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint and 
sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all 
the year round. For a long time, they made 
the most of the driest season to get their hay, 
working sometimes till nine o'clock at night, 
sedulously paring with their scythes in the twi- 
light round the hummocks left by the ice; but 
now it is not worth the getting, when they can 
come at it, and they look sadly round to their 
wood-lots and upland as a last resource. 

It is worth the while to make a voyage up 
this stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, 
only to see how much country there is in the 
rear of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, 
and farm-houses, and barns, and hay-stacks, 
you never saw before, and men everywhere, 
Sudbury, that is Southborough men, and Way- 
land, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound 
Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the 
river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. 



4 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Many waves are there agitated by the wind, 
keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your 
face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by the 
hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, 
just ready to rise, and now going off with a 
clatter and a whistling, like riggers straight for 
Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with 
reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all 
their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, 
to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; 
gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming 
for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm 
them by that you know of; their labored homes 
rising here and there like hay-stacks ; and count- 
less mice and moles and winged titmice along 
the sunny, windy shore; cranberries tossed on 
the waves and heaving up on the beach, their 
little red skiffs beating about among the alders; 
— such healthy natural tumult as proves the 
last day is not yet at hand. And there stand all 
around the alders, and birches, and oaks, and 
maples full of glee and sap, holding in their buds 
until the waters subside. You shall perhaps 
run aground on Cranberry Island, only some 
spires of last year's pipegrass above water, to 
show where the danger is, and get as good a 
freezing there as anywhere on the North-west 
Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my life. 
You shall see men you never heard of before, 
whose names you don't know, going away down 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 5 

through the meadows with long ducking guns, 
with water-tight boots, wading through the fowl- 
meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores, 
with guns at half cock, and they shall see teal, 
blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes, whist- 
lers, black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild 
and noble sights before night, such as they who 
sit in parlors never dream of. You shall see rude 
and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping 
their castles, or teaming up their summer's 
wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men 
fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and 
wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who 
were out not only in '75 and 1812, but have 
been out every day of their lives ; greater men 
than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakspeare, only 
they never got time to say so; they never took 
to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and 
imagine what they might write, if ever they 
should put pen to paper. Or what have they not 
written on the face of the earth already, clear- 
ing, and burning, and scratching, and harrow- 
ing, and plowing, and subsoiling, in and in, and 
out and out, and over and over, again and 
again, erasing what they had already written 
for want of parchment. 

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, 
as the work of to-day is present, so some flitting 
perspectives, and demi-experiences of the life 
that is in nature are in time veritably future, or 



6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, 
in the wind and rain which never die. 

The respectable folks, — 

Where dwell they? 

They whisper in the oaks, 

And they sigh in the hay; 

Summer and winter, night and day, 

Out on the meadow, there dwell they. 

They never die, 

Nor snivel, nor cry, 

Nor ask our pity 

With a wet eye. 

A sound estate they ever mend, 

To every asker readily lend; 

To the ocean wealth, 

To the meadow health, 

To Time his length, 

To the rocks strength, 

To the stars light, 

To the weary night, 

To the busy day, 

To the idle play; 

And so their good cheer never ends, 

For all are their debtors, and all their friends. 

Concord River is remarkable for the gentle- 
ness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, 
and some have referred to its influence the 
proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of 
Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and 
on later occasions. It has been proposed that 
the town should adopt for its coat of arms a 
field verdant, with the Concord circling nine 
times round. I have read that a descent of an 




Concord meadozcs 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 7 

eighth of an inch in a mile is sufficient to pro- 
duce a flow. Our river has, probably, very near 
the smallest allowance. The story is current, 
at any rate, though I believe that strict history 
will not bear it out, that the only bridge ever 
carried away on the main branch, within the 
limits of the town, was driven up stream by the 
wind. But wherever it makes a sudden bend it 
is shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to 
be called a river. Compared with the other 
tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have 
been properly named Musketaquid, or Meadow 
River, by the Indians. For the most part, it 
creeps through broad meadows, adorned with 
scattered oaks, where the cranberry is found in 
abundance, covering the ground like a moss- 
bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders 
the stream on one or both sides, while at a 
greater distance the meadow is skirted with 
maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees, over- 
run with the grape vine, which bears fruit in its 
season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. 
Still further from the stream, on the edge of the 
firm land, are seen the gray and white dwellings 
of the inhabitants. According to the valuation 
of 1831, there were in Concord two thousand one 
hundred and eleven acres, or about one-seventh 
of the whole territory, in meadow; this standing 
next in the list after pasturage and unimproved 
lands, and, judging from the returns of previous 



8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

years, the meadow is not reclaimed so fast as 
the woods are cleared. 

The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows 
steals thus unobserved through the town, with- 
out a murmur or a pulse-beat, its general course 
from south-west to north-east, and its length 
about fifty miles; a huge volume of matter, 
ceaselessly rolling through the plains and valleys 
of the substantial earth, with the moccasined 
tread of an Indian warrior, making haste from 
the high places of the earth to its ancient reser- 
voir. The murmurs of many a famous river on 
the other side of the globe reach even to us here, 
as to more distant dwellers on its banks; many 
a poet's stream floating the helms and shields of 
heroes on its bosom. The Xanthus or Sca- 
mander is not a mere dry channel and bed of 
a mountain torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing 
springs of fame; — 

"And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere 
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea;" — 

and I trust that I may be allowed to associate 
our muddy but much abused Concord River 
with the most famous in history. 

"Sure there are poets which did never dream 
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream 
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose 
Those made not poets, but the poets those." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 9 

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, 
those journeying atoms from the Rocky Moun- 
tains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the 
Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the 
annals of the world. The heavens are not yet 
drained over their sources, but the Mountains 
of the Moon still send their annual tribute to 
the Pasha without fail, as they did to the 
Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of 
his revenue at the point of the sword. Rivers 
must have been the guides which conducted the 
footsteps of the first travellers. They are the 
constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to 
distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a 
natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will 
at length accompany their currents to the low- 
lands of the globe, or explore at their invitation 
the interior of continents. They are the natural 
highways of all nations, not only levelling the 
ground, and removing obstacles from the path 
of the traveller, quenching his thirst, and bear- 
ing him on their bosoms, but conducting him 
through the most interesting scenery, the most 
populous portions of the globe, and where the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their 
greatest perfection. 

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, 
watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of 
all progress, following the same law with the 
system, with time, and all that is made; the 



10 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

weeds at the bottom gently bending down the 
stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted 
where their seeds had sunk, but ere long to die 
and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not 
yet anxious to better their condition, the chips 
and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of 
trees, that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were 
objects of singular interest to me, and at last 
I resolved to launch myself on its bosom, and 
float whither it would bear me. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 11 



SATURDAY 

"Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try 
These rural delicates." 

— Invitation to the Soul. Quakles. 

AT length, on Saturday, the last day of 
August, 1839, we two, brothers, and na- 
tives of Concord, weighed anchor in this 
river port; for Concord, too, lies under the sun, 
a port of entry and departure for the bodies as 
well as the souls of men; one shore at least 
exempted from all duties but such as an honest 
man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling 
rain had obscured the morning, and threatened 
to delay our voyage, but at length the leaves and 
grass were dried, and it came out a mild after- 
noon, as serene and fresh as if nature were ma- 
turing some greater scheme of her own. After 
this long dripping and oozing from every pore, 
she began to respire again more healthily than 
ever. So with a vigorous shove we launched 
our boat from the bank, while the flags and bul- 
rushes curtseyed a God-speed, and dropped 
silently down the stream. 

Our boat, which had cost us a week's labor in 
the spring, was in form like a fisherman's dory, 
fifteen feet long by three and a half in breadth 



12 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

at the widest part, painted green below, with a 
border of blue, with reference to the two ele- 
ments in which it was to spend its existence. It 
had been loaded the evening before at our door, 
half a mile from the river, with potatoes and 
melons from a patch which we had cultivated, 
and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels 
in order to be rolled around falls, as well as with 
two sets of oars, and several slender poles for 
shoving in shallow places, and also two masts, 
one of which served for a tent-pole at night; 
for a buffalo skin was to be our bed, and a tent 
of cotton cloth our roof. It was strongly built 
but heavy, and hardly of better model than 
usual. If rightly made, a boat would be a sort 
of amphibious animal, a creature of two ele- 
ments, related by one half its structure to some 
swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some 
strong- winged and graceful bird. The fish 
shows where there should be the greatest breadth 
of beam and depth in the hold; its fins direct 
where to set the oars, and the tail gives some 
hint for the form and position of the rudder. The 
bird shows how to rig and trim the sails, and 
what form to give to the prow that it may 
balance the boat and divide the air and water 
best. These hints we had but partially obeyed. 
But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will 
never be satisfied with any model, however 
fashionable, which does not answer all the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 13 

requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a 
ship but the wood, and yet the wood alone will 
rudely serve the purpose of a ship, so our boat 
being of wood gladly availed itself of the old 
law that the heavier shall float the lighter, and 
though a dull water fowl, proved a sufficient 
buoy for our purpose. 

"Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough 
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plow." 

Some village friends stood upon a promontory 
lower down the stream to wave us a last fare- 
well; but we, having already performed these 
shore rites with excusable reserve, as befits 
those who are embarked on unusual enterprises, 
who behold but speak not, silently glided past 
the firm lands of Concord, both peopled cape 
and lonely summer meadow, with steady sweeps. 
And yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns 
speak for us, when at length we had swept out 
of sight, and thus left the woods to ring again 
with their echoes; and it may be many russet- 
clad children lurking in those broad meadows, 
with the bittern and the woodcock and the rail, 
though wholly concealed by brakes and hard- 
hack and meadow-sweet, heard our salute that 
afternoon. 

We were soon floating past the first regular 
battle ground of the Revolution, resting on our 
oars between the still visible abutments of that 



14 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"North Bridge," over which in April, 1775, 
rolled the first faint tide of that war, which 
ceased not, till, as we read on the stone on our 
right, it "gave peace to these United States." 
As a Concord poet has sung, — 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

"The foe long since in silence slept; 
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps." 

Our reflections had already acquired a his- 
torical remoteness from the scenes we had left, 
and we ourselves essayed to sing. 

Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din 

That wakes the ignoble town, 
Not thus did braver spirits win 

A patriot's renown. 

There is one field beside this stream, 

Wherein no foot does fall, 
But yet it beareth in my dream 

A richer crop than all. 

Let me believe a dream so dear, 

Some heart beat high that day, 
Above the petty Province here, 

And Britain far away; 




The bridge at the Battleground 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 15 

Some hero of the ancient mould, 

Some arm of knightly worth, 
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold, 

Honored this spot of earth; 



Who sought the prize his heart described, 

And did not ask release, 
Whose free born valor was not bribed 

By prospect of a peace. 

The men who stood on yonder height 
That day are long since gone; 

Not the same hand directs the fight 
And monumental stone. 



Ye were the Grecian cities then, 
The Romes of modern birth, 

Where the New England husbandmen 
Have shown a Roman worth. 



In vain I search a foreign land, 

To find our Bunker Hill, 
And Lexington and Concord stand 

By no Laconian rill. 

With such thoughts we swept gently by this 
now peaceful pasture ground, on waves of Con- 
cord, in which was long since drowned the din 
of war. 

But since we sailed 
Some things have failed, 
And many a dream 
Gone down the stream. 



16 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Here then an aged shepherd dwelt, 
Who to his flock his substance dealt, 
And ruled them with a vigorous crook, 
By precept of the sacred Book; 
But he the pierless bridge passed o'er, 

And solitary left the shore. 

i 

Anon a youthful pastor came, 
Whose crook was not unknown to fame, 
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance, 
Spread o'er the country's wide expanse, 
And fed with "Mosses from the Manse." 
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale, 
And here the shepherd told his tale. 

That slight shaft had now sunk behind the 
hills, and we had floated round the neighboring 
bend, and under the new North Bridge between 
Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, into the 
Great Meadows, which, like a broad moccasin 
print, have levelled a fertile and juicy place in 
nature. 

On Ponkawtasset, since, with such delay, 
Down this still stream we took our meadowy way, 
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray 
Doth faintly shine on Concord's twilight day. 

Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high, 
Shining more brightly as the day goes by, 
Most travellers cannot at first descry, 
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky, 

And know celestial lights, do plainly see, 
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three; 
For lore that's deep must deeply studied be, 
As from deep wells men read star-poetry. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 17 

These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight, 
But like the sun they shine forever bright; 
Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight 
Put out its eyes that it may see their light. 

Who would neglect the least celestial sound, 
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground, 
If he could know it one day would be found 
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound, 
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round? 

Gradually the village murmur subsided, and 
we seemed to be embarked on the placid current 
of our dreams, floating from past to future as 
silently as one awakes to fresh morning or even- 
ing thoughts. We glided noiselessly down the 
stream, occasionally driving a pickerel from the 
covert of the pads, or a bream from her nest, 
and the smaller bittern now and then sailed 
away on sluggish wings from some recess in the 
shore, or the larger lifted itself out of the long 
grass at our approach, and carried its precious 
legs away to deposit them in a place of safety. 
The tortoises also rapidly dropped into the 
water, as our boat ruffled the surface amid the 
willows, breaking the reflections of the trees. 
The banks had passed the height of their beauty, 
and some of the brighter flowers showed by 
their faded tints that the season was verging 
towards the afternoon of the year; but this 
sombre tinge enhanced their sincerity, and in 
the still unabated heats they seemed like a 



18 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

mossy brink of some cool well. The narrow- 
leaved willow lay along the surface of the water 
in masses of light green foliage, interspersed 
with the large white balls of the button-bush. 
The rose-colored polygonum raised its head 
proudly above the water on either hand, and, 
flowering at this season, and in these localities, 
in the midst of dense fields of the white species 
which skirted the sides of the stream, its little 
streak of red looked very rare and precious. 
The pure white blossoms of the arrow-head 
stood in the shallower parts, and a few cardinals 
on the margin still proudly surveyed themselves 
reflected in the water, though the latter, as 
well as the pickerel-weed, was now nearly out 
of blossom. The snake-head, chelone glabra, 
grew close to the shore, while a kind of coreop- 
sis, turning its brazen face to the sun, full and 
rank, and a tall dull red flower, eupatorium 
purpureum, or trumpet weed, formed the rear 
rank of the fluvial array. The bright blue flow- 
ers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled here 
and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers 
which Proserpine had dropped, and still further 
in the fields, or higher on the bank, were seen 
the Virginian rhexia, and drooping neottia or 
ladies'-tresses; while from the more distant 
waysides, which we occasionally passed, and 
banks where the sun had lodged, was reflected 
a dull yellow beam from the ranks of tansy, now 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 19 

in its prime. In short, nature seemed to have 
adorned herself for our departure with a pro- 
fusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the 
bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. 
But we missed the white water-lily, which is 
the queen of river flowers, its reign being over 
for this season. He makes his voyage too late, 
perhaps, by a true water clock who delays so 
long. Many of this species inhabit our Concord 
water. I have passed down the river before 
sunrise on a summer morning between fields of 
lilies still shut in sleep; and when at length the 
flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the 
surface of the water, whole fields of white blos- 
soms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated 
along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible 
is this flower to the influence of the sun's rays. 

As we were floating through the last of these 
familiar meadows, we observed the large and 
conspicuous flowers of the hibiscus, covering the 
dwarf willows, and mingled with the leaves of 
the grape, and wished that we could inform one 
of our friends behind of the locality of this some- 
what rare and inaccessible flower before it was 
too late to pluck it; but we were just gliding out 
of sight of the village spire before it occurred to 
us that the farmer in the adjacent meadow 
would go to church on the morrow, and would 
carry this news for us; and so by the Monday, 
while we should be floating on the Merrimack, 



20 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

our friend would be reaching to pluck this blos- 
som on the bank of the Concord. 

After a pause at Ball's Hill, the St. Ann's of 
Concord voyageurs, not to say any prayer for 
the success of our voyage, but to gather the few 
berries which were still left on the hills, hang- 
ing by very slender threads, we weighed anchor 
again, and were soon out of sight of our native 
village. The land seemed to grow fairer as we 
withdrew from it. Ear away to the south-west 
lay the quiet village, left alone under its elms 
and button-woods in mid afternoon; and the 
hills, notwithstanding their blue, ethereal faces, 
seemed to cast a saddened eye on their old play- 
fellows; but, turning short to the north, we 
bade adieu to their familiar outlines, and ad- 
dressed ourselves to new scenes and adventures. 
Nought was familiar but the heavens, from 
under whose roof the voyageur never passes; 
but with their countenance, and the acquaint- 
ance we had with river and wood, we trusted 
to fare well under any circumstances. 

From this point, the river runs perfectly 
straight for a mile or more to Carlisle Bridge, 
which consists of twenty wooden piers, and 
when we looked back over it, its surface was re- 
duced to a line's breadth, and appeared like a 
cobweb gleaming in the sun. Here and there 
might be seen a pole sticking up, to mark the 
place where some fisherman had enjoyed un- 




BalP s Hilly in the middle distance on the left 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 21 

usual luck, and in return had consecrated 
his rod to the deities who preside over these 
shallows. It was full twice as broad as before, 
deep and tranquil, with a muddy bottom, and 
bordered with willows, beyond which spread 
broad lagoons covered with pads, bulrushes, 
and flags. 

Late in the afternoon we passed a man on 
the shore fishing with a long birch pole, its 
silvery bark left on, and a dog at his side, row- 
ing so near as to agitate his cork with our oars, 
and drive away luck for a season; and when we 
had rowed a mile as straight as an arrow, with 
our faces turned towards him, and the bubbles 
in our wake still visible on the tranquil surface, 
there stood the fisher still with his dog, like 
statues under the other side of the heavens, 
the only objects to relieve the eye in the ex- 
tended meadow; and there would he stand abid- 
ing his luck, till he took his way home through 
the fields at evening with his fish. Thus, by 
one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants 
into all her recesses. This man was the last of 
our townsmen whom we saw, and we silently 
through him bade adieu to our friends. 

The characteristics and pursuits of various 
ages and races of men are always existing in 
epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures 
of my earliest youth have become the inherit- 



22 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ance of other men. This man is still a fisher, 
and belongs to an era in which I myself have 
lived. Perchance he is not confounded by 
many knowledges, and has not sought out 
many inventions, but how to take many fishes 
before the sun sets, with his slender birchen 
pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough 
for him. It is good even to be a fisherman in 
summer and in winter. Some men are judges 
these August days, sitting on benches, even 
till the court rises; they sit judging there 
honorably, between the seasons and between 
meals, leading a civil politic life, arbitrating in 
the case of Spaulding versus Cummings, it may 
be, from highest noon till the red vesper sinks 
into the west. The fisherman, meanwhile, 
stands in three feet of water, under the same 
summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases be- 
tween muckworm and shiner, amid the fragrance 
of water-lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading 
his life many rods from the dry land, within a 
pole's length of where the larger fishes swim. 
Human life is to him very much like a river, 

— "renning aie downward to the sea." 

This was his observation. His honor made a 
great discovery in bailments. 

I can just remember an old brown-coated 
man who was the Walton of this stream, who 
had come over from Newcastle, England, with 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 23 

his son, the latter a stout and hearty man who 
had lifted an anchor in his day. A straight old 
man he was who took his way in silence through 
the meadows, having passed the period of com- 
munication with his fellows; his old experienced 
coat hanging long and straight and brown as 
the yellow pine bark, glittering with so much 
smothered sunlight, if you stood near enough, 
no work of art but naturalized at length. I 
often discovered him unexpectedly amid the 
pads and the gray willows when he moved, 
fishing in some old country method, — for 
youth and age then went a-fishing together, — 
full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance 
about his own Tyne and Northumberland. He 
was always to be seen in serene afternoons 
haunting the river, and almost rustling with 
the sedge; so many sunny hours in an old man's 
life, entrapping silly fish, almost grown to be 
the sun's familiar; what need had he of hat or 
raiment any, having served out his time, and 
seen through such thin disguises? I have seen 
how his coeval fates rewarded him with the 
yellow perch, and yet I thought his luck was 
not in proportion to his years; and I have seen 
when, with slow steps and weighed down with 
aged thoughts, he disappeared with his fish 
under his low-roofed house on the skirts of the 
village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody 
else remembers him now, for he soon after died, 



24 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and migrated to new Tyne streams. His fish- 
ing was not a sport, nor solely a means of sub- 
sistence, but a sort of solemn sacrament and 
withdrawal from the world, just as the aged 
read their bibles. 

Whether we live by the sea-side, or by the 
lakes and rivers, or on the prairie, it concerns 
us to attend to the nature of fishes, since they 
are not phenomena confined to certain locali- 
ties only, but forms and phases of the life 
in nature universally dispersed. The countless 
shoals which annually coast the shores of 
Europe and America are not so interesting to 
the student of nature as the more fertile law 
itself, which deposits their spawn on the tops 
of mountains, and on the interior plains; the 
fish principle in nature, from which it results 
that they may be found in water in so many 
places, in greater or less numbers. The natural 
historian is not a fisherman, who prays for 
cloudy days and good luck merely, but as fish- 
ing has been styled "a contemplative man's 
recreation," introducing him profitably to woods 
and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's ob- 
servations is not in new genera or species, but 
in new contemplations still, and science is only 
a more contemplative man's recreation. The 
seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere dis- 
seminated, whether the winds waft them, or 
the waters float them, or the deep earth holds 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 25 

them; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it 
is stocked with this vivacious race. They have 
a lease of nature, and it is not yet out. The 
Chinese are bribed to carry their ova from 
province to province in jars or in hollow reeds, 
or the water-birds to transport them to the 
mountain tarns and interior lakes. There are 
fishes wherever there is a fluid medium, and 
even in clouds and in melted metals we detect 
their semblance. Think how in winter you 
can sink a line down straight in a pasture 
through snow and through ice, and pull up a 
bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or 
golden fish! It is curious, also, to reflect how 
they make one family, from the largest to the 
smallest. The least minnow, that lies on the 
ice as bait for pickerel, looks like a huge sea- 
fish cast up on the shore. In the waters of this 
town there are about a dozen distinct species, 
though the inexperienced would expect many 
more. 

It enhances our sense of the grand security 
and serenity of nature to observe the still un- 
disturbed economy and content of the fishes of 
this century, their happiness a regular fruit of 
the summer. The fresh-water Sun Fish, Bream, 
or Ruff, Pomotis vulgaris, as it were, without 
ancestry, without posterity, still represents the 
Fresh Water Sun Fish in nature. It is the most 



26 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

common of all, and seen on every urchin's 
string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose 
nests are visible all along the shore, hollowed 
in the sand, over which it is steadily poised 
through the summer hours on waving fin. 
Sometimes there are twenty or thirty nests in 
the space of a few rods, two feet wide by half 
a foot in depth, and made with no little labor, 
the weeds being removed, and the sand shoved 
up on the sides, like a bowl. Here it may be 
seen early in summer assiduously brooding, and 
driving away minnows and larger fishes, even 
its own species, which would disturb its ova, 
pursuing them a few feet, and circling round 
swiftly to its nest again: the minnows, like 
young sharks, instantly entering the empty 
nests meanwhile, and swallowing the spawn, 
which is attached to the weeds and to the 
bottom, on the sunny side. The spawn is ex- 
posed to so many dangers that a very small 
proportion can ever become fishes, for beside 
being the constant prey of birds and fishes, a 
great many nests are made so near the shore, 
in shallow water, that they are left dry in a 
few days, as the river goes down. These and 
the lamprey's are the only fishes' nests that I 
have observed, though the ova of some species 
may be seen floating on the surface. The 
breams are so careful of their charge that you 
may stand close by in the water and examine 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 27 

them at your leisure. I have thus stood over 
them half an hour at a time, and stroked them 
familiarly without frightening them, suffering 
them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen 
them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my 
hand approached their ova, and have even 
taken them gently out of the water with my 
hand; though this cannot be accomplished by 
a sudden movement, however dexterous, for 
instant warning is conveyed to them through 
their denser element, but only by letting the 
fingers gradually close about them as they are 
poised over the palm, and with the utmost 
gentleness raising them slowly to the surface. 
Though stationary, they keep up a constant 
sculling or waving motion with their fins, which 
is exceedingly graceful, and expressive of their 
humble happiness; for unlike ours, the element 
in which they live is a stream which must be 
constantly resisted. From time to time they 
nibble the weeds at the bottom or overhanging 
their nests, or dart after a fly or a worm. The 
dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of a 
keel, with the anal, serves to keep the fish up- 
right, for in shallow water, where this is not 
covered, they fall on their sides. As you stand 
thus stooping over the bream in its nest, the 
edges of the dorsal and caudal fins have a 
singular dusty golden reflection, and its eyes, 
which stand out from the head, are transparent 



28 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and colorless. Seen in its native element, it is 
a very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all 
its parts, and looks like a brilliant coin fresh 
from the mint. It is a perfect jewel of the river, 
the green, red, coppery, and golden reflections 
of its mottled sides being the concentration of 
such rays as struggle through the floating pads 
and flowers to the sandy bottom, and in har- 
mony with the sunlit brown and yellow pebbles. 
Behind its watery shield it dwells far from many 
accidents inevitable to human life. 

There is also another species of bream found 
in our river, without the red spot on the oper- 
culum, which, according to M. Agassiz, is 
undescribed. 

The Common Perch, Perca flavescens, which 
name describes well the gleaming, golden re- 
flections of its scales as it is drawn out of the 
water, its red gills standing out in vain in the 
thin element, is one of the handsomest and 
most regularly formed of our fishes, and at such 
a moment as this reminds us of the fish in the 
picture, which wished to be restored to its 
native element until it had grown larger; and 
indeed most of this species that are caught are 
not half grown. In the ponds there is a light- 
colored and slender kind, which swim in shoals 
of many hundreds in the sunny water, in com- 
pany with the shiner, averaging not more than 
six or seven inches in length, while only a few 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 29 

larger specimens are found in the deepest water, 
which prey upon their weaker brethren. I have 
often attracted these small perch to the shore 
at evening, by rippling the water with my 
fingers, and they may sometimes be caught 
while attempting to pass inside your hands. It 
is a tough and heedless fish, biting from im- 
pulse, without nibbling, and from impulse re- 
fraining to bite, and sculling indifferently past. 
It rather prefers the clear water and sandy 
bottoms, though here it has not much choice. 
It is a true fish, such as the angler loves to put 
into his basket or hang at the top of his willow 
twig, in shady afternoons along the banks of 
the stream. So many unquestionable fishes he 
counts, and so many shiners, which he counts 
and then throws away. 

The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or 
whatever else it is called, Leuciscus pulchellus, 
white and red, always an unexpected prize, 
which, however, any angler is glad to hook for 
its rarity. A name that reminds us of many an 
unsuccessful ramble by swift streams, when the 
wind rose to disappoint the fisher. It is com- 
monly a silvery soft-scaled fish, of graceful, 
scholarlike, and classical look, like many a 
picture in an English book. It loves a swift 
current and a sandy bottom, and bites inad- 
vertently, yet not without appetite for the bait. 
The minnows are used as bait for pickerel in 



30 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the winter. The red chivin, according to some, 
is still the same fish, only older, or with its tints 
deepened as they think by the darker water it 
inhabits, as the red clouds swim in the twilight 
atmosphere. He who has not hooked the red 
chivin is not yet a complete angler. Other 
fishes, methinks, are slightly amphibious, but 
this is a denizen of the water wholly. The cork 
goes dancing down the swift-rushing stream, 
amid the weeds and sands, when suddenly, by 
a coincidence never to be remembered, emerges 
this fabulous inhabitant of another element, 
a thing heard of but not seen, as if it were the 
instant creation of an eddy, a true product of 
the running stream. And this bright cupreous 
dolphin was spawned and has passed its life 
beneath the level of your feet in your native 
field. Fishes, too, as well as birds and clouds, 
derive their armor from the mine. I have heard 
of mackerel visiting the copper banks at a par- 
ticular season; this fish, perchance, has its habi- 
tat in the Coppermine River. I have caught 
white chivin of great size in the Aboljack- 
nagesic, where it empties into the Penobscot, 
at the base of Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones 
there. The latter variety seems not to have 
been sufficiently observed.' 

The Dace, Leuciscus argenteus, is a slight 
silvery minnow, found generally in the middle 
of the stream, where the current is most 



SATURDAY 31 

rapid, and frequently confounded with the last 
named. 

The Shiner, Leuciscus crysoleucas, is a soft- 
scaled and tender fish, the victim of its stronger 
neighbors, found in all places, deep and shallow, 
clear and turbid; generally the first nibbler at 
the bait, but, with its small mouth and nibbling 
propensities, not easily caught. It is a gold or 
silver bit that passes current in the river, its 
limber tail dimpling the surface in sport or 
flight. I have seen the fry when frightened by 
something thrown into the water, leap out by 
dozens, together with the dace, and wreck 
themselves upon a floating plank. It is the 
little light-infant of the river, with body armor 
of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its 
life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the 
water, half in the air, upward and ever upward 
with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet 
still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is 
almost dissolved by the summer heats. A 
slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in 
one of our ponds. 

The Pickerel, Esox reticulatus, the swiftest, 
wariest, and most ravenous of fishes, is very 
common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along 
the sides of the stream. It is a solemn, stately, 
ruminant fish, lurking under the shadow of a 
pad at noon, with still, circumspect, voracious 
eye, motionless as a jewel set in water, or mov- 



32 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ing slowly along to take up its position, darting 
from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog 
or insect as comes within its range, and swal- 
lowing it at a gulp. I have caught one which 
had swallowed a brother pickerel half as large 
as itself, with the tail still visible in its mouth, 
while the head was already digested in its 
stomach. Sometimes a striped snake, bound to 
greener meadows across the stream, ends its 
undulatory progress in the same receptacle. 
They are so greedy and impetuous that they are 
frequently caught by being entangled in the 
line the moment it is cast. Fishermen also dis- 
tinguish the brook pickerel, a shorter and 
thicker fish than the former. 
' The Horned Pout, Pimelodus nebulosus, some- 
times called Minister, from the peculiar squeak- 
ing noise it makes when drawn out of the water, 
is a dull and blundering fellow, and like the eel 
vespertinal in his habits, and fond of the mud. 
It bites deliberately as if about its business. 
They are taken at night with a mass of worms 
strung on a thread, which catches in their teeth, 
sometimes three or four, with an eel, at one 
pull. They are extremely tenacious of life, 
opening and shutting their mouths for half an 
hour after their heads have been cut off. A 
bloodthirsty and bullying race of rangers, in- 
habiting the fertile river bottoms, with ever a 
lance in rest, and ready to do battle with their 



SATURDAY 33 

nearest neighbor. I have observed them in 
summer, when every other one had a long and 
bloody scar upon his back, where the skin 
was gone, the mark, perhaps, of some fierce en- 
counter. Sometimes the fry, not an inch long, 
are seen darkening the shore with their myriads. 

The Suckers, Catostomi Bostonienses and 
tuberculati, Common and Horned, perhaps on 
an average the largest of our fishes, may be 
seen in shoals of a hundred or more, stemming 
the current in the sun, on their mysterious 
migrations, and sometimes sucking in the bait 
which the fisherman suffers to float toward 
them. The former, which sometimes grow to 
a large size, are frequently caught by the hand 
in the brooks, or, like the red chivins, are jerked 
out by a hook fastened firmly to the end of a 
stick and placed under their jaws. They are 
hardly known to the mere angler, however, 
not often biting at his baits, though the spearer 
carries home many a mess in the spring. To our 
village eyes, these shoals have a foreign and im- 
posing aspect, realizing the fertility of the seas. 

The Common Eel, too, Muroena Bostoniensis, 
the only species known in the State, a slimy, 
squirming creature, informed of mud, still 
squirming in the pan, is speared and hooked up 
with various success. Methinks it too occurs 
in picture, left after the deluge, in many a 
meadow high and dry. 



34 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

In the shallow parts of the river, where the 
current is rapid, and the bottom pebbly, you 
may sometimes see the curious circular nests of 
the Lamprey Eel, Petromyzon Americanus, the 
American Stone-Sucker, as large as a cart wheel, 
a foot or two in height, and sometimes rising 
half a foot above the surface of the water. They 
collect these stones, of the size of a hen's egg, 
with their mouths, as their name implies, and 
are said to fashion them into circles with their 
tails. They ascend falls by clinging to the 
stones, which may sometimes be raised by lift- 
ing the fish by the tail. As they are not seen 
on their way down the streams, it is thought 
by fishermen that they never return, but waste 
away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of 
trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature 
in the scenery of the river bottoms, worthy to 
be remembered with Shakspeare's description 
of the sea-floor. They are rarely seen in our 
waters at present, on account of the dams, 
though they are taken in great quantities at 
the mouth of the river in Lowell. Their nests, 
which are very conspicuous, look more like art 
than anything in the river. 

If we had leisure this afternoon, we might 
turn our prow up the brooks in quest of the 
classical trout and the minnows. Of the last 
alone, according to M. Agassiz, several of the 
species found in this town are yet undescribed. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 35 

These would, perhaps, complete the list of our 
finny contemporaries in the Concord waters. 

Salmon, Shad, and Alewives were formerly 
abundant here, and taken in weirs by the In- 
dians, who taught this method to the whites, 
by whom they were used as food and as manure, 
until the dam, and afterward the canal at 
Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put an 
end to their migrations hitherward; though it 
is thought that a few more enterprising shad 
may still occasionally be seen in this part of 
the river. It is said, to account for the de- 
struction of the fishery, that those who at that 
time represented the interests of the fisher- 
men and the fishes, remembering between what 
dates they were accustomed to take the grown 
shad, stipulated that the dams should be left 
open for that season only, and the fry, which 
go down a month later, were consequently 
stopped and destroyed by myriads. Others 
say that the fish-ways were not properly con- 
structed. Perchance, after a few thousands of 
years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass 
their summers elsewhere, meanwhile, nature 
will have levelled the Billerica dam, and the 
Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River 
run clear again, to be explored by new migra- 
tory shoals, even as far as the Hopkinton pond 
and Westborough swamp. 

One would like^ to know more of that race, 



36 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

now extinct, whose seines lie rotting in the 
garrets of their children, who openly professed 
the trade of fishermen, and even fed their 
townsmen creditably, not skulking through the 
meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim 
visions we still get of miraculous draughts of 
fishes, and heaps uncountable by the river- 
side, from the tales of our seniors sent on horse- 
back in their childhood from the neighboring 
towns, perched on saddle-bags, with instruc- 
tions to get the one bag filled with shad, the 
other with alewives. At least one memento of 
those days may still exist in the memory of this 
generation, in the familiar appellation of a 
celebrated train-band of this town, whose un- 
trained ancestors stood creditably at Concord 
North Bridge. Their captain, a man of pisca- 
tory tastes, having duly warned his company 
to turn out on a certain day, they, like obedient 
soldiers, appeared promptly on parade at the 
appointed time, but, unfortunately, they went 
undrilled, except in the manoeuvres of a sol- 
dier's wit and unlicensed jesting, that May 
day; for their captain, forgetting his own ap- 
pointment, and warned only by the favorable 
aspect of the heavens, as he had often done 
before, went a fishing that afternoon, and his 
company thenceforth was known to old and 
young, grave and gay, as "The Shad," and by 
the youths of this vicinity this was long re- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 37 

garded as the proper name of all the irregular 
militia in Christendom. But, alas, no record 
of these fishers' lives remains, that we know 
of, unless it be one brief page of hard but un- 
questionable history, which occurs in Day 
Book No. 4, of an old trader of this town, long 
since dead, which shows pretty plainly what 
constituted a fisherman's stock in trade in 
those days. It purports to be a Fisherman's 
Account Current, probably for the fishing sea- 
son of the year 1805, during which months he 
purchased daily rum and sugar, sugar and 
rum, N. E. and W. I., "one cod line," "one 
brown mug," and "a line for the seine;" rum 
and sugar, sugar and rum, "good loaf sugar," 
and "good brown," W. I. and N. E., in short 
and uniform entries to the bottom of the page, 
all carried out in pounds, shillings, and pence, 
from March 25th to June 5th, and promptly 
settled by receiving "cash in full" at the last 
date. But perhaps not so settled altogether. 
These were the necessaries of life in those days; 
with salmon, shad, and alewives, fresh and 
pickled, he was thereafter independent on the 
groceries. Rather a preponderance of the fluid 
elements; but such was this fisherman's nature. 
I can faintly remember to have seen the same 
fisher in my earliest youth, still as near the 
river as he could get, with uncertain undula- 
tory step, after so many things had gone down 



38 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

stream, swinging a scythe in the meadow, his 
bottle like a serpent hid in the grass; himself as 
yet not cut down by the Great Mower. 

Surely the fates are forever kind, though 
Nature's laws are more immutable than any 
despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarely 
seem rigid, but permit him to relax with license 
in summer weather. He is not harshly re- 
minded of the things he may not do. She is 
very kind and liberal to all men of vicious 
habits, and certainly does not deny them 
quarter; they do not die without priest. Still 
they maintain life along the way, keeping this 
side the Styx, still hearty, still resolute, "never 
better in their lives;" and again, after a dozen 
years have elapsed, they start up from behind 
a hedge, asking for work and wages for able- 
bodied men. Who has not met such 

"a beggar on the way, 



Who sturdily could gang?" . . . 
"Who cared neither for wind nor wet, 
In lands where'er he past?" 

"That bold adopts each house he views, his own; 
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure, 
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Caesar;" — 

As if consistency were the secret of health, 
while the poor inconsistent aspirant man, seek- 
ing to live a pure life, feeding on air, divided 
against himself, cannot stand, but pines and 
dies after a life of sickness, on beds of down. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 39 

The unwise are accustomed to speak as if 
some were not sick; but methinks the differ- 
ence between men in respect to health is not 
great enough to lay much stress upon. Some 
are reputed sick and some are not. It often 
happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the 
sounder. 

Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord 
River at Lowell, where they are said to be a 
month earlier than the Merrimack shad, on 
account of the warmth of the water. Still 
patiently, almost pathetically, with instinct not 
to be discouraged, not to be reasoned with, re- 
visiting their old haunts, as if their stern fates 
would relent, and still met by the Corporation 
with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? 
When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee 
the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the 
sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the 
mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them 
free for thee to enter. By countless shoals 
loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely stem- 
ming the tide there, in danger from sea foes in 
spite of thy bright armor, awaiting new in- 
structions, until the sands, until the water it- 
self, tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole 
migrating nations, full of instinct, which is thy 
faith, in this backward spring, turned adrift, 
and perchance knowest not where men do not 
dwell, where there are not factories, in these 



40 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

days. Armed with no sword, no electric shock, 
but mere Shad, armed only with innocence and 
a just cause, with tender dumb mouth only 
forward, and scales easy to be detached. I for 
one am with thee, and who knows what may 
avail a crow-bar against that Billerica dam? — 
Not despairing when whole myriads have gone 
to feed those sea monsters during thy suspense, 
but still brave, indifferent, on easy fin there, 
like shad reserved for higher destinies. Willing 
to be decimated for man's behoof after the 
spawning season. Away with the superficial 
and selfish phil-anthropy of men, — who knows 
what admirable virtue of fishes may be below 
low-water mark, bearing up against a hard 
destiny, not admired by that fellow creature 
who alone can appreciate it! Who hears the 
fishes when they cry? It will not be forgotten 
by some memory that we were contemporaries. 
Thou shalt ere long have thy way up the rivers, 
up all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mis- 
taken. Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall 
be more than realized. If it were not so, but 
thou wert to be overlooked at first and at last, 
then would not I take their heaven. Yes, I say 
so, who think I know better than thou canst. 
Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the tides thou 
mayest meet. 

At length it would seem that the interests, 
not of the fishes only, but of the men of Way- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 41 

land, of Sudbury, of Concord, demand the 
levelling of that dam. Innumerable acres of 
meadow are waiting to be made dry land, wild 
native grass to give place to English. The 
farmers stand with scythes whet, waiting the 
subsiding of the waters, by gravitation, by 
evaporation or otherwise, but sometimes their 
eyes do not rest, their wheels do not roll, on 
the quaking meadow ground during the hay- 
ing season at all. So many sources of wealth 
inaccessible. They rate the loss hereby in- 
curred in the single town of Wayland alone 
as equal to the' expense of keeping a hundred 
yoke of oxen the year round. One year, as I 
learn, not long ago, the farmers standing ready 
to drive their teams afield as usual, the water 
gave no signs of falling; without new attrac- 
tion in the heavens, without freshet or visible 
cause, still standing stagnant at an unprece- 
dented height. All hydrometers were at fault; 
some trembled for their English even. But 
speedy emissaries revealed the unnatural secret, 
in the new float-board, wholly a foot in width, 
added to their already too high privileges by 
the dam proprietors. The hundred yoke of 
oxen, meanwhile, standing patient, gazing wish- 
fully meadowward, at that inaccessible waving 
native grass, uncut but by the great mower 
Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without so 
much as a wisp to wind about their horns. 



42 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

That was a long pull from Ball's Hill to Car- 
lisle Bridge, sitting with our faces to the south, 
a slight breeze rising from the north, but never- 
theless water still runs and grass grows, for 
now, having passed the bridge between Car- 
lisle and Bedford, we see men haying far off in 
the meadow, their heads waving like the grass 
which they cut. In the distance the wind 
seemed to bend all alike. As the night stole 
over, such a freshness was wafted across the 
meadow that every blade of cut-grass seemed 
to teem with life. Faint purple clouds began 
to be reflected in the water, and the cow-bells 
tinkled louder along the banks, while, like sly 
water rats, we stole along nearer the shore, 
looking for a place to pitch our camp. 

At length, when we had made about seven 
miles, as far as Billerica, we moored our boat 
on the west side of a little rising ground which 
in the spring forms an island in the river. Here 
we found huckleberries still hanging upon the 
bushes, where they seemed to have slowly 
ripened for our especial use. Bread and sugar, 
and cocoa boiled in river water, made our re- 
past, and as we had drank in the fluvial pros- 
pect all day, so now we took a draught of the 
water with our evening meal to propitiate the 
river gods, and whet our vision for the sights it 
was to behold. The sun was setting on the one 
hand, while our eminence was contributing its 




A Billerica bridge 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 43 

shadow to the night, on the other. It seemed 
insensibly to grow lighter as the night shut in, 
and a distant and solitary farm-house was re- 
vealed, which before lurked in the shadows of 
the noon. There was no other house in sight, 
nor any cultivated field. To the right and left, 
as far as the horizon, were straggling pine woods 
with their plumes against the sky, and across 
the river were rugged hills, covered with shrub 
oaks, tangled with grape vines and ivy, with 
here and there a gray rock jutting out from 
the maze. The sides of these cliffs, though a 
quarter of a mile distant, were almost heard to 
rustle while we looked at them, it was such a 
leafy wilderness; a place for fauns and satyrs, 
and where bats hung all day to the rocks, and 
at evening flitted over the water, and fireflies 
husbanded their light under the grass and 
leaves against the night. When we had pitched 
our tents on the hill-side, a few rods from the 
shore, we sat looking through its triangular 
door in the twilight at our lonely mast on the 
shore, just seen above the alders, and hardly 
yet come to a stand-still from the swaying of 
the stream; the first encroachment of com- 
merce on this land. There was our port, our 
Ostia. That straight geometrical line against 
the water and the sky stood for the last refine- 
ments of civilized life, and what of sublimity 
there is* in history was there symbolized. 



44 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

For the most part, there was no recognition 
of human life in the night, no human breath- 
ing was heard, only the breathing of the wind. 
As we sat up, kept awake by the novelty of our 
situation, we heard at intervals foxes stepping 
about over the dead leaves, and brushing the 
dewey grass close to our tent, and once a mus- 
quash fumbling among the potatoes and melons 
in our boat, but when we hastened to the shore 
we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffl- 
ing the disk of a star. At intervals we were 
serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or 
the throttled cry of an owl, but after each sound 
which near at hand broke the stillness of the 
night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling 
among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, 
and deeper and more conscious silence, as if 
the intruder were aware that no life was right- 
fully abroad at that hour. There was a fire in 
Lowell, as we judged, this night, and we saw 
the horizon blazing, and heard the distant 
alarm bells, as it were a faint tinkling music 
borne to these woods. But the most constant 
and memorable sound of a summer's night, 
which we did not fail to hear every night after- 
ward, though at no time so incessantly and so 
favorably as now, was the barking of the house 
dogs, from the loudest and hoarsest bark to 
the faintest aerial palpitation under the eaves 
of heaven, from the patient but anxious mastiff 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 45 

to the timid and wakeful terrier, at first loud 
and rapid, then faint and slow, to be imitated 
only in a whisper; wow-wow-wow-wow — wo — 
wo — w — w. Even in a retired and unin- 
habited district like this, it was a sufficiency of 
sound for the ear of night, and more impressive 
than any music. I have heard the voice of a 
hound, just before daylight, while the stars 
were shining, from over the woods and river, 
far in the horizon, when it sounded as sweet 
and melodious as an instrument. The hound- 
ing of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in 
the horizon, may have first suggested the notes 
of the hunting horn to alternate with and re- 
lieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle 
long resounded in the woods of the ancient 
world before the horn was invented. The very 
dogs that sullenly bay the moon from farm- 
yards in these nights, excite more heroism in 
our breasts than all the civil exhortations or 
war sermons of the age. "I had rather be a 
dog, and bay the moon," than many a Roman 
that I know. The night is equally indebted to 
the clarion of the cock, with wakeful hope, 
from the very setting of the sun, prematurely 
ushering in the dawn. All these sounds, the 
crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the 
hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of 
nature's health or sound state. Such is the 
never failing beauty and accuracy of language, 



46 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of 
a thousand years retouches it. 

At length the antepenultimate and drowsy 
hours drew on, and all sounds were denied en- 
trance to our ears. 

Who sleeps by day and walks by night, 
Will meet no spirit but some sprite. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 47 



SUNDAY 

"The river calmly flows, 
Through shining banks, through lonely glen, 
Where the owl shrieks, though ne'er the cheer of men 

Has stirred its mute repose, 
Still if you should walk there, you would go there again." 

— Channing. 

"The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the south, 
which they call Merrimac." 

Sietjb de Monts. Relations of the Jesuits, 1604. 

IN the morning the river and adjacent coun- 
try were covered with a dense fog, through 
which the smoke of our fire curled up like a 
still sub tiler mist; but before we had rowed 
many rods, the sun arose and the fog rapidly 
dispersed, leaving a slight steam only to curl 
along the surface of the water. It was a quiet 
Sunday morning, with more of the auroral rosy 
and white than of the yellow light in it, as if it 
dated from earlier than the fall of man, and 
still preserved a heathenish integrity; — 

An early unconverted Saint, 

Free from noontide or evening taint, 

Heathen without reproach, 

That did upon the civil day encroach, 

And ever since its birth 

Had trod the outskirts of the earth. 



48 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

But the impressions which the morning makes 
vanish with its dews, and not even the most 
"persevering mortal" can preserve the memory 
of its freshness to mid-day. As we passed the 
various islands, or what were islands in the 
spring, rowing with our backs down stream, we 
gave names to them. The one on which we 
had camped we called Fox Island, and one fine 
densely wooded island surrounded by deep 
water and overrun by grape vines, which looked 
like a mass of verdure and of flowers cast upon 
the waves, we named Grape Island. From 
Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house, the river 
was still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, 
dark, and dead stream, flowing between gentle 
hills and sometimes cliffs, and well wooded all 
the way. It was a long woodland lake bordered 
with willows. For long reaches we could see 
neither house nor cultivated field, nor any sign 
of the vicinity of man. Now we coasted along 
some shallow shore by the edge of a dense pali- 
sade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded 
the water as if dipt by art, reminding us of the 
reed forts of the East Indians, of which we had 
read; and now the bank slightly raised was 
overhung with graceful grasses and various 
species of brake, whose downy stems stood 
closely grouped and naked as in a vase, while 
their heads spread several feet on either side. 
The dead limbs of the willow were rounded and 




B Merle a Meeting-house 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 49 

adorned by the climbing mikania, mikania 
scandens, which filled every crevice in the leafy 
bank, contrasting agreeably with the gray bark 
of its supporter and the balls of the button- 
bush. The water willow, salix Purshiana, when 
it is of large size and entire, is the most grace- 
ful and ethereal of our trees. Its masses of 
light green foliage, piled one upon another to 
the height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to 
float on the surface of the water, while the slight 
gray stems and the shore were hardly visible 
between them. No tree is so wedded to the 
water, and harmonizes so well with still streams. 
It is even more graceful than the weeping willow, 
or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches 
in the stream instead of being buoyed up by it. 
Its limbs curved outward over the surface as if 
attracted by it. It had not a New England but 
an oriental character, reminding us of trim Per- 
sian gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the arti- 
ficial lakes of the east. 

As we thus dipped our way along between 
fresh masses of foliage overrun with the grape 
and smaller flowering vines, the surface was so 
calm, and both air and water so transparent, 
that the flight of a kingfisher or robin over the 
river was as distinctly seen reflected in the water 
below as in the air above. The birds seemed to 
flit through submerged groves, alighting on the 
yielding sprays, and their clear notes to come up 



50 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

from below. We were uncertain whether the 
water floated the land, or the land held the water 
in its bosom. It was such a season, in short, as 
that in which one of our Concord poets sailed on 
its stream, and sung its quiet glories. 

"There is an inward voice, that in the stream 
Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear, 
And in a calm content it floweth on. 
Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect. 
Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts, 
It doth receive the green and graceful trees, 
And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms, — " 

And more he sung, but too serious for our page. 
For every oak and birch too growing on the hill- 
top, as well as for these elms and willows, we 
knew that there was a graceful, ethereal and ideal 
tree making down from the roots, and sometimes 
Nature in high tides brings her mirror to its foot 
and makes it visible. The stillness was intense 
and almost conscious, as if it were a natural 
Sabbath. The air was so elastic and crystalline 
that it had the same effect on the landscape that 
a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal re- 
moteness and perfection. The landscape was 
clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the 
woods and fences checkered and partitioned it 
with new regularity, and rough and uneven 
fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness 
to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct 
and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang 
over fairv-land. The world seemed decked for 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 51 

some holyday or prouder pageantry, with silken 
streamers flying, and the course of our lives to 
wind on before us like a green lane into a coun- 
try maze, at the season when fruit trees are in 
blossom. 

Why should not our whole life and its scenery 
be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives 
want a suitable background. They should at 
least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impres- 
sive to behold as objects in the desert, a broken 
shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless 
horizon. Character always secures for itself this 
advantage, and is thus distinct and unrelated 
to near or trivial objects, whether things or per- 
sons. On this same stream a maiden once sailed 
in my boat, thus unattended but by invisible 
guardians, and as she sat in the prow there was 
nothing but herself between the steersman and 
the sky. I could then say with the poet: — 

"Sweet falls the summer air 
Over her frame who sails with me; 
Her way like that is beautifully free, 
Her nature far more rare, 
And is her constant heart of virgin purity." 

At evening still the very stars seem but this 
maiden's emissaries and reporters of her progress. 

Low in the eastern sky 
Is set thy glancing eye; 
And though its gracious light 
Ne'er riseth to my sight, 



52 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Yet every star that climbs 
Above the gnarled limbs 

Of yonder hill, 
Conveys thy gentle will. 

Believe I knew thy thought, 
And that the zephyrs brought 
Thy kindest wishes through, 
As mine they bear to you, 
That some attentive cloud 
Did pause amid the crowd 

Over my head, 
While gentle things were said. 

Believe the thrushes sung, 
And that the flower bells rung, 
That herbs exhaled their scent, 
And beasts knew what was meant, 
The trees a welcome waved, 
And lakes their margins laved, 

When thy free mind 
To my retreat did wind. 

It was a summer eve, 
The air did gently heave, 
While yet a low hung cloud 
Thy eastern skies did shroud; 
The lightning's silent gleam, 
Startling my drowsy dream, 
Seemed like the flash 
Under thy dark eyelash. 

Still will I strive to be 
As if thou wert with me; 
Whatever path I take, 
It shall be for thy sake, 
Of gentle slope and wide, 
As thou wert by my side, 

Without a root 
To trip thy gentle foot. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 53 

I'll walk with gentle pace, 
And choose the smoothest place, 
And careful dip the oar, 
And shun the winding shore, 
And gently steer my boat 
Where water lilies float, 

And cardinal flowers 
Stand in their sylvan bowers. 

It required some rudeness to disturb with our 
boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in 
which every twig and blade of grass was so faith- 
fully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to 
imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. 
The shallowest still water is unfathomable. 
Wherever the trees and skies are reflected there 
is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of 
fancy running aground. We noticed that it re- 
quired a separate intention of the eye, a more 
free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected 
trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom 
merely; and so are there manifold visions in the 
direction of every object, and even the most 
opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. 
Some men have their eyes naturally intended to 
the one, and some to the other object. 

"A man that looks on glass, 
On it may stay his eye, 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, 
And the heavens espy." 

Two men in a skiff, whom we passed here- 
abouts, floating buoyantly amid the reflections 



54 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of the trees, like a feather in mid air, or a leaf 
which is wafted gently from its twig to the water 
without turning over, seemed still in their ele- 
ment, and to have very delicately availed them- 
selves of the natural laws. Their floating there 
was a beautiful and successful experiment in 
natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in 
our eyes the art of navigation, for as birds fly 
and fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded 
us how much fairer and nobler all the actions of 
man might be, and that our life in its whole 
economy might be as beautiful as the fairest 
works of art or nature. 

The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and 
glanced from every pad; the bulrushes and flags 
seemed to rejoice in the delicious light and air; 
the meadows were a-drinking at their leisure; 
the frogs sat meditating, all Sabbath thoughts, 
summing up their week, with one eye out on the 
golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eyeing the 
wondrous universe in which they act their part; 
the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as 
maidens go to church; shoals of golden and silver 
minnows rose to the surface to behold the heav- 
ens, and then sheered off into more sombre aisles; 
they swept by as if moved by one mind, con- 
tinually gliding past each other, and yet pre- 
serving the form of their battalion unchanged, 
as if they were still embraced by the transparent 
membrane which held the spawn; a young band 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 55 

of brethren and sisters, trying their new fins; 
now they wheeled, now shot ahead, and when 
we drove them to the shore and cut them off, 
they dexterously tacked and passed underneath 
the boat. Over the old wooden bridges no trav- 
eller crossed, and neither the river nor the fishes 
avoided to glide between the abutments. 

Here was a village not far off behind the woods, 
Billerica, settled not long ago, and the children 
still bear the names of the first settlers in this 
late "howling wilderness;" yet to all intents and 
purposes it is as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an 
old gray town, where men grow old and sleep 
already under moss-grown monuments, — out- 
grow their usefulness. This is ancient Billerica 
(Villarica?), now in its dotage. I never heard 
that it was young. See, is not Nature here gone 
to decay, farms all run out, meeting-house grown 
gray and racked with age? If you would know 
of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in 
the pasture. It has a bell that sounds sometimes 
as far as Concord woods; I have heard that, 
aye, — hear it now. No wonder that such a 
sound startled the dreaming Indian, and fright- 
ened his game, when the first bells were swung 
on trees, and sounded through the forest beyond 
the plantations of the white man. But to-day I 
like best the echo amid these cliffs and woods. 
It is no feeble imitation, but rather its original, 
or as if some rural Orpheus played over the strain 
again to show how it should sound. 



56 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Dong, sounds the brass in the east, 
As if to a funeral feast, 
But I like that sound the best 
Out of the fluttering west. 

The steeple ringeth a knell, 
But the fairies' silvery bell 
Is the voice of that gentle folk, 
Or else the horizon that spoke. 

Its metal is not of brass, 
But air, and water, and glass, 
And under a cloud it is swung, 
And by the wind it is rung. 

When the steeple tolleth the noon, 

It soundeth not so soon, 

Yet it rings a far earlier hour, 

And the sun has not reached its tower. 

On the other hand, the road runs up to Car- 
lisle, city of the woods, which, if it is less civil, 
is the more natural. It does well hold the earth 
together. It gets laughed at because it is a small 
town, I know, but nevertheless it is a place where 
great men may be born any day, for fair winds 
and foul blow right on over it without distinction. 
It has a meeting-house and horse-sheds, a tavern 
and a blacksmith's shop for centre, and a good 
deal of wood to cut and cord yet. And 

"Bedford, most noble Bedford, 
I shall not thee forget." 

History has remembered thee; especially that 
meek and humble petition of thy old planters, 




The road to Carlisle 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 57 

like the wailing of the Lord's own people, "To 
the gentlemen, the selectmen" of Concord, pray- 
ing to be erected into a separate parish. We 
can hardly credit that so plaintive a psalm re- 
sounded but little more than a century ago along 
these Babylonish waters. "In the extreme diffi- 
cult seasons of heat and cold," said they, "we 
were ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what 
a weariness is it." — "Gentlemen, if our seeking 
to draw off proceed from any disaffection to our 
present reverend pastor, or the Christian society 
with whom we have taken such sweet counsel 
together, and walked unto the house of God in 
company, then hear us not this day, but we 
greatly desire, if God please, to be eased of our 
burden on the Sabbath, the travel and fatigue 
thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us, 
near to our houses, and in our hearts, that we 
and our little ones may serve the Lord. We 
hope that God, who stirred up the spirit of 
Cyrus to set forward temple work, has stirred 
us up to ask, and will stir you up to grant, the 
prayer of our petition; so shall your humble 
petitioners ever pray, as in duty bound, — ." 
And so the temple work went forward here to a 
happy conclusion. Yonder in Carlisle the build- 
ing of the temple was many wearisome years de- 
layed, not that there was wanting of Shittim 
wood, or the gold of Ophir, but a site therefor 
convenient to all the worshippers; whether on 



58 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Buttrick's Plain," or rather on "Poplar Hill:" 
it was a tedious question. 

In this Billerica solid men must have lived, 
select from year to year, a series of town clerks, 
at least, and there are old records that you may 
search. Some spring the white man came, built 
him a house, and made a clearing here, letting 
in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old gray 
stones in fences, cut down the pines around his 
dwelling, planted orchard seeds brought from 
the old country, and persuaded the civil apple 
tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the 
juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness. 
Their old stocks still remain. He culled the 
graceful elm from out the woods and from the 
river-side, and so refined and smoothed his vil- 
lage plot. And thus he plants a town. He rudely 
bridged the stream, and drove his team afield into 
the river meadows, cut the wild grass, and laid 
bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat, and 
with the whetting of his scythe scared off the 
deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of 
English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with 
his grain he scattered the seeds of the dandelion 
and the wild trefoil over the meadows, mingling 
his English flowers with the wild native ones. 
The bristling burdock, the sweet scented catnip, 
and the humble yarrow, planted themselves 
along his woodland road, they too seeking "free- 
dom to worship God" in their way. The white 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 59 

man's mullein soon reigned in Indian corn-fields, 
and sweet scented English grasses clothed the 
new soil. Where, then, could the red man set 
his foot? The honey bee hummed through the 
Massachusetts woods, and sipped the wild 
flowers round the Indian's wigwam, per- 
chance unnoticed, when, with prophetic warn- 
ing, it stung the red child's hand, forerunner 
of that industrious tribe that was to come 
and pluck the wild flower of his race up by the 
root. 

The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with 
a load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence 
as a fire raked up, knowing well what he knows, 
not guessing but calculating; strong in commun- 
ity, yielding obedience to authority; of experi- 
enced race; of wonderful, wonderful common 
sense; dull but capable, slow but persevering, 
severe but just, of little humor but genuine; a 
laboring man, despising game and sport; build- 
ing a house that endures, a framed house. He 
buys the Indian's moccasins and baskets, then 
buys his hunting grounds, and at length forgets 
where he is buried, and plows up his bones. And 
here town records, old, tattered, time-worn, 
weather-stained chronicles, contain the Indian 
sachem's mark, perchance an arrow or a beaver, 
and the few fatal words by which he deeded his 
hunting grounds away. He comes with a list of 
ancient Saxon, Norman, and Celtic names, and 



60 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

strews them up and down this river, — Fra- 
mingham, Sudbury, Bedford, Carlisle, Billerica, 
Chelmsford, — and this is New Angle-land, and 
these are the new West Saxons, whom the red 
men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese, 
and so at last they are known for Yankees. 

When we were opposite to the middle of 
Billerica, the fields on either hand had a soft 
and cultivated English aspect, the village spire 
being seen over the copses which skirt the river, 
and sometimes an orchard straggled down to the 
water side, though, generally, our course this 
forenoon was the wildest part of our voyage. It 
seemed that men led a quiet and very civil life 
there. The inhabitants were plainly cultivators 
of the earth, and lived under an organized po- 
litical government. The school-house stood 
with a meek aspect, entreating a long truce to 
war and savage life. Every one finds by his own 
experience, as well as in history, that the era 
in which men cultivate the apple, and the amen- 
ities of the garden, is essentially different from 
that of the hunter and forest life, and neither 
can displace the other without loss. We have 
all had our day dreams, as well as more pro- 
phetic nocturnal visions, but as for farming, I 
am convinced that my genius dates from an 
older era than the agricultural. I would at least 
strike my spade into the earth with such careless 
freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 61 

into a tree. There is in my nature, methinks, 
a singular yearning toward all wildness. I know 
of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere 
love for some things, and when I am reproved I 
fall back on to this ground. What have I to do 
with plows? I cut another furrow than you see. 
Where the off ox treads, there is it not, it is 
further off; where the nigh ox walks, it will not 
be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop fails 
not, and what are drought and rain to me? The 
rude Saxon pioneer will sometimes pine for that 
refinement and artificial beauty which are Eng- 
lish, and love to hear the sound of such sweet 
and classical names as the Pentland and Malvern 
Hills, the Cliffs of Dover and the Trossacks, 
Richmond, Derwent, and Winandermere, which 
are to him now instead of the Acropolis and 
Parthenon, of Baise, and Athens with its sea 
walls, and Arcadia and Tempe. 

Greece, who am I that should remember thee, 

Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylae? 

Is my life vulgar, my fate mean, 

Which on these golden memories can lean? 

We are apt enough to be pleased with such books 
as Evelyn's Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium 
Hortense, but they imply a relaxed nerve in the 
reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it 
wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and 
the outlaw. There may be an excess of cultiva- 



62 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

tion as well as of anything else, until civilization 
becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man, — 
all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven- 
born virtues are but good manners ! The young 
pines springing up in the corn-fields from year 
to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of 
civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for 
his improvement. By the wary independence 
and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves 
his intercourse with his native gods, and is ad- 
mitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar 
society with Nature. He has glances of starry 
recognition to which our saloons are strangers. 
The steady illumination of his genius, dim only 
because distant, is like the faint but satisfying 
light of the stars compared with the dazzling 
but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. 
The Society Islanders had their day-born gods, 
but they were not supposed to be "of equal an- 
tiquity with the atua fauau po, or night-born 
gods." It is true, there are the innocent pleas- 
ures of country life, and it is sometimes pleasant 
to make the earth yield her increase, and gather 
the fruits in their season, but the heroic spirit 
will not fail to dream of remoter retirements and 
more rugged paths. It will have its garden plots 
and its parterres elsewhere than on the earth, 
and gather nuts and berries by the way for its 
subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heed- 
lessness as berries. We would not always be 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 63 

soothing and taming Nature, breaking the horse 
and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild 
and chase the buffalo. The Indian's intercourse 
with Nature is at least such as admits of the 
greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat 
of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too 
much of a familiar. There is something vulgar 
and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, 
something noble and cleanly in the former's 
distance. In civilization, as in a southern lati- 
tude, man degenerates at length, and yields to 
the incursion of more northern tribes, 

"Some nation yet shut in 
With hills of ice." 

There are other, savager, and more primeval 
aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It 
is only white man's poetry. Homer and Ossian 
even can never revive in London or Boston. 
And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by 
the mere tradition, or the imperfectly trans- 
mitted fragrance and flavor of these wild fruits. 
If we could listen but for an instant to the chaunt 
of the Indian muse, we should understand why 
he will not exchange his savageness for civiliza- 
tion. Nations are not whimsical. Steel and 
blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian 
does well to continue Indian. 

After sitting in my chamber many days, 
reading the poets, I have been out early on a 



64 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

foggy morning, and heard the cry of an owl in 
a neighboring wood as from a nature behind 
the common, unexplored by science or by 
literature. None of the feathered race has yet 
realized my youthful conceptions of the wood- 
land depths. I had seen the red Election-bird 
brought from their recesses on my comrades' 
string, and fancied that their plumage would 
assume stranger and more dazzling colors, like 
the tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced 
further into the darkness and solitude of the 
forest. Still less have I seen such strong and 
wild tints on any poet's string. 

These modern ingenious sciences and arts do 
not affect me as those more venerable arts of 
hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in 
its primitive and simple form; as ancient and 
honorable trades as the sun and moon and 
winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, 
and invented when these were invented. We 
do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard 
Arkwright, though the poets would fain make 
them to have been gradually learned and 
taught. According to Gower, 

"And Iadahel, as saith the boke, 
Firste made nette, and fishes toke. 
Of huntyng eke he fond the chace, 
Whiche nowe is knowe in many place; 
A tent of clothe, with corde and stake, 
He sette up first, and did it make." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 65 

Also, Lydgate says: 

"Jason first sayled, in story it is tolde, 
Toward Colchos, to wynne the flees of golde. 
Ceres the Goddess fond first the til the of londe; 

***** 
Also, Aristeus fonde first the usage 
Of mylke, and cruddis, and of honey swote; 
Peryodes, for grete avauntage, 
From flyntes smote fuyre, daryng in the roote." 

We read that Aristeus "obtained of Jupiter 
and Neptune, that the pestilential heat of the 
dog days, wherein was great mortality, should 
be mitigated with wind." This is one of those 
dateless benefits conferred on man, which have 
no record in our vulgar day, though we still 
find some similitude to them in our dreams, in 
which we have a more liberal and juster appre- 
hension of things, unconstrained by habit, 
which is then in some measure put off, and 
divested of memory, which we call history. 

According to fable, when the island of ^Egina 
was depopulated by sickness, at the instance of 
iEacus, Jupiter turned the ants into men, that 
is, as some think, he made men of the inhabit- 
ants who lived meanly like ants. This is per- 
haps the fullest history of those early days 
extant. 

The fable which is naturally and truly com- 
posed, so as to satisfy the imagination, ere it 
addresses the understanding, beautiful though 



66 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

strange as a wild flower, is to the wise man an 
apothegm, and admits of his most generous in- 
terpretation. When we read that Bacchus 
made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that 
they leapt into the sea, mistaking it for a 
meadow full of flowers, and so became dolphins, 
we are not concerned about the historical 
truth of this, but rather a higher poetical truth. 
We seem to hear the music of a thought, and 
care not if the understanding be not gratified. 
For their beauty, consider the fables of Nar- 
cissus, of Endymion, of Memnon son of Morn- 
ing, the representative of all promising youths 
who have died a premature death, and whose 
memory is melodiously prolonged to the latest 
morning; the beautiful stories of Phaeton, and 
of the Sirens whose isle shone afar off white 
with the bones of unburied men; and the 
pregnant ones of Pan, Prometheus, and the 
Sphynx; and that long list of names which 
have already become part of the universal lan- 
guage of civilized men, and from proper are be- 
coming common names or nouns, — the Sibyls, 
the Eumenides, the Parcse, the Graces, the 
Muses, Nemesis, &c. 

It is interesting to observe with what singular 
unanimity the furthest sundered nations and 
generations consent to give completeness and 
roundness to an ancient fable, of which they 
indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 67 

By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be 
only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest 
posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. 
As when astronomers call the lately discovered 
planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astrsea, that 
the Virgin who was driven from earth to heaven 
at the end of the golden age, may have her 
local habitation in the heavens more distinctly 
assigned her, — for the slightest recognition of 
poetic worth is significant. By such slow aggre- 
gation has mythology grown from the first. 
The very nursery tales of this generation, were 
the nursery tales of primeval races. They 
migrate from east to west, and again from 
west to east; now expanded into the "tale 
divine" of bards, now shrunk into a popular 
rhyme. This is an approach to that universal 
language which men have sought in vain. This 
fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of 
truth by the latest posterity, content with 
slightly and religiously re-touching the old 
material, is the most impressive proof of a 
common humanity. 

All nations love the same jests and tales, 
Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the 
same translated suffice for all. All men are 
children, and of one family. The same tale 
sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the 
morning. Joseph Wolff, the missionary, dis- 
tributed copies of Robinson Crusoe, translated 



68 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they made 
a great sensation. "Robinson Crusoe's adven- 
tures and wisdom," says he, "were read by 
Mahometans in the market-places of Sanaa, 
Hodyeda, and Loheya, and admired and be- 
lieved!" On reading the book, the Arabians 
exclaimed, "Oh, that Robinson Crusoe must 
have been a great prophet!" 

To some extent, mythology is only the most 
ancient history and biography. So far from 
being false or fabulous in the common sense, 
it contains only enduring and essential truth, 
the I and you, the here and there, the now and 
then, being omitted. Either time or rare 
wisdom writes it. Before printing was dis- 
covered, a century was equal to a thousand 
years. The poet is he who can write some pure 
mythology to-day without the aid of posterity. 
In how few words, for instance, the Greeks 
would have told the story of Abelard and 
Heloise, making but a sentence for our classical 
dictionary, — and then, perchance have stuck 
up their names to shine in some corner of the 
firmament. We moderns, on the other hand, 
collect only the raw materials of biography and 
history, "memoirs to serve for a history," 
which itself is but materials to serve for a 
mythology. How many volumes folio would 
the Life and Labors of Prometheus have filled, 
if perchance it had fallen, as perchance it did 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 69 

first, in days of cheap printing! Who knows 
what shape the fable of Columbus will at length 
assume, to be confounded with that of Jason 
and the expedition of the Argonauts? And 
Franklin, — there may be a line for him in the 
future classical dictionary, recording what that 
demigod did, and referring him to some new 

genealogy. "Son of and . He aided 

the Americans to gain their independence, in- 
structed mankind in economy, and drew down 
lightning from the clouds." 

The hidden significance of these fables which 
is sometimes thought to have been detected, 
the ethics running parallel to the poetry and 
history, are not so remarkable as the readiness 
with which they may be made to express a 
variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons 
of still older and more universal truths than 
any whose flesh and blood they are for the 
time made to wear. It is like striving to make 
the sun, or the wind, or the sea, symbols to 
signify exclusively the particular thoughts of 
our day. But what signifies it? In the my thus 
a superhuman intelligence uses the uncon- 
scious thoughts and dreams of men as its 
hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the 
history of the human mind, these glowing and 
ruddy fables precede the noon-day thoughts of 
men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine 
intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the 



70 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

glare of philosophy, always dwells in this 
auroral atmosphere. 

As we said before, the Concord is a dead 
stream, but its scenery is the more suggestive 
to the contemplative voyager, and this day its 
water was fuller of reflections than our pages 
even. Just before it reaches the falls in Billerica 
it is contracted, and becomes swifter and shal- 
lower, with a yellow pebbly bottom, hardly 
passable for a canal boat, leaving the broader 
and more stagnant portion above like a lake 
among the hills. All through the Concord, 
Bedford, and Billerica meadows, we had heard 
no murmur from its stream, except where some 
tributary runnel tumbled in, — 

Some tumultuous little rill, 

Purling round its storied pebble, 
Tinkling to the self-same tune, 
From September until June, 

Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble. 

Silent flows the parent stream, 

And if rocks do lie below, 
Smothers with her waves the din, 
As it were a youthful sin, 

Just as still, and just as slow. 

But now at length we heard this staid and 
primitive river rushing to her fall, like any 
rill. We here left its channel, just above the 
Billerica Falls, and entered the canal, which 




Above Billerica Falls 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 71 

runs, or rather is conducted, six miles through 
the woods to the Merrimack at Middlesex, and 
as we did not care to loiter in this part of our 
voyage, while one ran along the tow-path draw- 
ing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off the 
shore with a pole, so that we accomplished the 
whole distance in little more than an hour. 
This canal, which is the oldest in the country, 
and has even an antique look beside the more 
modern railroads, is fed by the Concord, so 
that we were still floating on its familiar waters. 
It is so much water which the river lets for the 
advantage of commerce. There appeared some 
want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not 
of equal date with the woods and meadows 
through which it is led, and we missed the con- 
ciliatory influence of time on land and water; 
but in the lapse of ages, Nature will recover and 
indemnify herself, and gradually plant fit shrubs 
and flowers along its borders. Already the 
kingfisher sat upon a pine over the water, 
and the bream and pickerel swam below. Thus 
all works pass directly out of the hands of the 
architect into the hands of Nature, to be 
perfected. 

It was a retired and pleasant route, without 
houses or travellers, except some young men 
who were lounging upon a bridge in Chelms- 
ford, who leaned impudently over the rails to 
pry into our concerns, but we caught the eye 



72 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of the most forward, and looked at him till he 
was visibly discomfited. Not that there was any 
peculiar efficacy in our look, but rather a sense 
of shame left in him which disarmed him. 

It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He 
looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and 
prototype of all daggers must have been a 
glance of the eye. First, there was the glance 
of Jove's eye, then his fiery bolt, then, the 
material gradually hardening, tridents, spears, 
javelins, and finally, for the convenience of 
private men, daggers, krisses, and so forth, were 
invented. It is wonderful how we get about 
the streets without being wounded by these 
delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so 
nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being 
noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet after all, it 
is rare that one gets seriously looked at. 

As we passed under the last bridge over the 
canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the 
people coming out of church paused to look at 
us from above, and apparently, so strong is 
custom, indulged in some heathenish compari- 
sons; but we were the truest observers of this 
sunny day. According to Hesiod, 

"The seventh is a holy day, 
For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo," 

and by our reckoning this was the seventh day 
of the week, and not the first. I find among 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 73 

the papers of an old Justice of the Peace and 
Deacon of the town of Concord, this singular 
memorandum, which is worth preserving as a 
relic of an ancient custom. After reforming 
the spelling and grammar, it runs as follows: — 
"Men that travelled with teams on the Sab- 
bath, Dec. 18th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richard- 
son and Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They 
had teams with rigging such as is used to carry 
barrels, and they were travelling westward. 
Richardson was questioned by the Hon. Ephraim 
Wood, Esq., and he said that Jonas Parker was 
his fellow traveller, and he further said that a 
Mr. Longley was his employer, who promised to 
bear him out." We were the men that were 
gliding northward, this Sept. 1st, 1839, with 
still team, and rigging not the most convenient 
to carry barrels, unquestioned by any Squire or 
Church Deacon, and ready to bear ourselves 
out, if need were. In the latter part of the 
seventeenth century, according to the historian 
of Dunstable, "Towns were directed to erect 
'a cage' near the meeting-house, and in this 
all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath 
were confined." Society has relaxed a little 
from its strictness, one would say, but I pre- 
sume that there is not less religion than formerly. 
If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, 
it is only drawn the tighter in another. 

You can hardly convince a man of an error 



74 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

in a life-time, but must content yourself with 
the reflection that the progress of science is 
slow. If he is not convinced, his grand-children 
may be. The geologists tell us that it took one 
hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, 
and one hundred and fifty more, to prove that 
they are not to be referred to the Noachian 
deluge. I am not sure but I should betake my- 
self in extremities to the liberal divinities of 
Greece, rather than to my country's God. 
Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new 
attributes, is more absolute and unapproach- 
able, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is 
not so much of a gentleman, among gods, not so 
gracious and catholic, he does not exert so inti- 
mate and genial an influence on nature, as many 
a god of the Greeks. I should fear the infinite 
power and inflexible justice of the almighty 
mortal, hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly 
masculine, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, 
no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, 
Ovfxco (j>L\eovord re, K-qSojxevr) re. The Grecian are 
youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the 
vices of men, but in many important respects 
essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, 
Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his 
ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy 
body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, 
and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great 
God Pan is not dead, as was rumored. Perhaps 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 75 

of all the gods of New England and of ancient 
Greece, I am most constant at his shrine. 

It seems to me that the god that is commonly 
worshipped in civilized countries is not at all 
divine, though he bears a divine name, but is 
the overwhelming authority and respectability 
of mankind combined. Men reverence one an- 
other, not yet God. If I thought that I could 
speak with discrimination and impartiality of 
the nations of Christendom, I should praise 
them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to 
be the most civil and humane, but I may be 
mistaken. Every people have gods to suit 
their circumstances; the Society Islanders had 
a god called Toahitu, "in shape like a dog; he 
saved such as were in danger of falling from 
rocks and trees." I think that we can do with- 
out him, as we have not much climbing to do. 
Among them a man could make himself a god 
out of a piece of wood in a few minutes, which 
would frighten him out of his wits. 

I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of 
the old school, who had the supreme felicity to 
be born in "days that tried men's souls," hear- 
ing this, may say with Nestor, another of the 
old school, "But you are younger than I. For 
time was when I conversed with greater men 
than you. For not at any time have I seen 
such men nor shall see them, as Perithous, and 
Dry as, and iroufxeva Xawi/," that is probably 



76 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Washington, sole "Shepherd of the People." 
And when Apollo has now six times rolled west- 
ward, or seemed to roll, and now for the sixth 
time shows his face in the east, eyes well nigh 
glazed, long glassed, which have fluctuated only 
between lamb's wool and worsted, explore cease- 
lessly some good sermon book. For six days 
shalt thou labor and do all thy knitting, but on 
the seventh, forsooth thy reading. Happy we 
who can bask in this warm September sun, 
which illumines all creatures, as well when they 
rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of 
gratitude; whose life is as blameless, how blame- 
worthy soever it may be, on the Lord's Mona- 
day as on his Suna-day. 

There are various, nay incredible faiths; why 
should we be alarmed at any of them? What 
man believes, God believes. Long as I have 
lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and 
seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any 
direct and conscious blasphemy or irreverence; 
but of indirect and habitual enough. Where is 
the man who is guilty of direct and personal in- 
solence to Him that made him? — Yet there are 
certain current expressions of blasphemous modes 
of viewing things, — as, frequently, when we 
say, "He is doing a good business," — more 
profane than cursing and swearing. There is sin 
and death in such words. Let not the children 
hear them. — My neighbor says that his hill 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 77 

farm is "poor stuff," "only fit to hold the world 
together," — and much more to that effect. He 
deserves that God should give him a better for so 
free a treating of his gifts, more than if he pa- 
tiently put up therewith. But perhaps my 
farmer forgets that his lean soil has sharpened 
his wits. This is a crop it was good for. 

One memorable addition to the old mythology 
is due to this era, — the Christian fable. With 
what pains, and tears, and blood, these centuries 
have woven this and added it to the mythology 
of mankind. The new Prometheus. With what 
miraculous consent, and patience, and persist- 
ency, has this mythus been stamped upon the 
memory of the race? It would seem as if it were 
in the progress of our mythology to dethrone 
Jehovah, and crown Christ in his stead. 

If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know 
not what to call it. Such a story as that of 
Jesus Christ, — the history of Jerusalem, say, 
being a part of the Universal History. The 
naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jeru- 
salem amid its desolate hills, — think of it. In 
Tasso's poem I trust some things are sweetly 
buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with 
which they preach Christianity still. What are 
time and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred 
years, and a new world? — that the humble life 
of a Jewish peasant should have force to make 
a New York bishop so bigoted. Forty -four 



78 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

lamps, the gift of kings, now burning in a 
place called the Holy Sepulchre; — a church 
bell ringing; — some unaffected tears shed by a 
pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week. — 

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, 
may my right hand forget her cunning." 

"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, 
and we wept when we remembered Zion." 

I trust that some may be as near and dear to 
Buddha or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are 
without the pale of their churches. It is neces- 
sary not to be Christian, to appreciate the beauty 
and significance of the life of Christ. I know 
that some will have hard thoughts of me, when 
they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, 
yet I am sure that I am willing they should love 
their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is 
the main thing, and I like him too. Why need 
Christians be still intolerant and superstitious? 
The simple-minded sailors were unwilling to cast 
overboard Jonah at his own request. — 

"Where is this love become in later age? 
Alas ! 't is gone in endless pilgrimage 
From hence, and never to return, I doubt, 
Till revolution wheel those times about." 

One man says, — 

"The world's a popular disease, that reigns 
Within the froward heart and frantic brains 
Of poor distempered mortals." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 79 

Another that 

— " all the world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players." 

The world is a strange place for a play-house to 
stand within it. Old Drayton thought that a 
man that lived here, and would be a poet, for 
instance, should have in him certain "brave 
translunary things," and a "fine madness" 
should possess his brain. Certainly it were as 
well that he might be up to the occasion. That 
is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson 
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne, 
that "his life has been a miracle of thirty years, 
which to relate, were not history, but a piece of 
poetry, and would sound like a fable." The 
wonder is rather that all men do not assert as 
much. 

Think what a mean and wretched place this 
world is; that half the time we have to light a 
lamp that we may see to live in it. This is half 
our life. Who would undertake the enterprise if 
it were all? And, pray, what more has day to 
offer? A lamp that burns more clear, a purer 
oil, say winter-strained, that so we may pursue 
our idleness with less obstruction. Bribed with 
a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we 
bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with 
hymns. 

I make ye an offer, 

Ye gods, hear the scoffer, 



80 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The scheme will not hurt you, 

If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue. 

Though I am your creature, 

And child of your nature, 

I have pride still unbended, 

And blood undescended, 

Some free independence, 

And my own descendants. 

I cannot toil blindly, 

Though ye behave kindly, 

And I swear by the rood, 

I'll be slave to no God. 

If ye will deal plainly, 

I will strive mainly, 

If ye will discover, 

Great plans to your lover, 

And give him a sphere 

Somewhat larger than here. 

"Verily, my angels! I was abashed on account 
of my servant, who had no Providence but me; 
therefore did I pardon him." — The Gulistan of 
Sadi. 

Most people with whom I talk, men and 
women even of some originality and genius, 
have their scheme of the universe all cut and 
dried, — very dry, I assure you, to hear, dry 
enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post, 
methinks, — which they set up between you 
and them in the shortest intercourse; an ancient 
and tottering frame with all its boards blown 
off. They do not walk without their bed. Some 
to me seemingly very unimportant and unsub- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 81 

stantial things and relations, are for them ever- 
lastingly settled, — as Father, Son, and Holy- 
Ghost, and the like. These are like the ever- 
lasting hills to them. But in all my wanderings, 
I never came across the least vestige of authority 
for these things. They have not left so distinct 
a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geolog- 
ical period on the coal in my grate. The wisest 
man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; 
he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the 
heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more 
clearly at one time than at another, the medium 
through which I see is clearer. To see from 
earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a 
fixture, that old Jewish scheme! What right 
have you to hold up this obstacle to my under- 
standing you, to your understanding me! You 
did not invent it; it was imposed on you. Ex- 
amine your authority. Even Christ, we fear, 
had his scheme, his conformity to tradition, 
which slightly vitiates his teaching. He had 
not swallowed all formulas. He preached some 
mere doctrines. As for me, Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob are now only the subtilest imagi- 
nable essences, which would not stain the morn- 
ing sky. Your scheme must be the framework 
of the universe; all other schemes will soon be 
ruins. The perfect God in his revelations of 
himself has never got to the length of one such 
proposition as you, his prophets, state. Have 



82 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

you learned the alphabet of heaven, and can 
count three? Do you know the number of 
God's family? Can you put mysteries into 
words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? 
Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of 
heaven's topography? Whose friend are you 
that speak of God's personality? Do you, 
Miles Howard, think that he has made you his 
confidant? Tell me of the height of the moun- 
tains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, 
and I may believe you, but of the secret history 
of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee 
mad. Yet we have a sort of family history of 
our God, — so have the Tahitians of theirs, — 
and some old poet's grand imagination is imposed 
on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's 
own word! 

The New Testament is an invaluable book, 
though I confess to having been slightly preju- 
diced against it in my very early days by the 
church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, 
before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the 
catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their 
meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries 
out of one's head, and taste its true flavor. — I 
think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon 
which has been preached from this text; almost 
all other sermons that I have heard or heard of, 
have been but poor imitations of this. — It 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 83 

would be a poor story to be prejudiced against 
the Life of Christ, because the book has been 
edited by Christians. In fact, I love this book 
rarely, though it is a sort of castle in the air to 
me, which I am permitted to dream. Having 
come to it so recently and freshly, it has the 
greater charm, so that I cannot find any to 
talk with about it. I never read a novel, they 
have so little real life and thought in them. 
The reading which I love best is the scriptures 
of the several nations, though it happens that 
I am better acquainted with those of the Hin- 
doos, the Chinese, and the Persians, than of 
the Hebrews, which I have come to last. Give 
me one of these Bibles, and you have silenced 
me for a while. When I recover the use of my 
tongue, I am wont to worry my neighbors with 
the new sentences, but commonly they cannot 
see that there is any wit in them. Such has been 
my experience with the New Testament. I have 
not yet got to the crucifixion, I have read it over 
so many times. I should love dearly to read it 
aloud to my friends, some of whom are seriously 
inclined; it is so good, and I am sure that they 
have never heard it, it fits their case exactly, 
and we should enjoy it so much together, — 
but I instinctively despair of getting their ears. 
They soon show, by signs not to be mistaken, 
that it is inexpressibly wearisome to them. I do 
not mean to imply that I am any better than my 



84 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

neighbors; for, alas! I know that I am only as 
good, though I love better books than they. It 
is remarkable, that notwithstanding the uni- 
versal favor with which the New Testament is 
outwardly received, and even the bigotry with 
which it is defended, there is no hospitality 
shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order 
of truth with which it deals. I know of no book 
that has so few readers. There is none so truly 
strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To 
Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is 
foolishness and a stumbling block. There are, 
indeed, severe things in it which no man should 
read aloud but once. — "Seek first the kingdom 
of heaven." — "Lay not up for yourselves treas- 
ures on earth." — "If thou wilt be perfect, go 
and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, 
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." — 
"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul? or what 
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" — 
Think of this, Yankees! — "Verily I say unto 
you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, 
ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence 
to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing 
shall be impossible unto you." — Think of re- 
peating these things to a New England audience ! 
thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly, till there are three 
barrels of sermons ! Who, without cant, can read 
them aloud? Who, without cant, can hear them, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 85 

and not go out of the meeting-house? They 
never were read, they never were heard. Let 
but one of these sentences be rightly read from 
any pulpit in the land, and there would not be 
left one stone of that meeting-house upon another. 

Yet the New Testament treats of man and 
man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, 
and is too constantly moral and personal, to 
alone content me, who am not interested solely 
in man's religious or moral nature, or in man 
even. I have not the most definite designs on 
the future. Absolutely speaking, Do unto others 
as you would that they should do unto you, is 
by no means a golden rule, but the best of cur- 
rent silver. An honest man would have but 
little occasion for it. It is golden not to have 
any rule at all in such a case. The book has 
never been written which is to be accepted 
without any allowance. Christ was a sublime 
actor on the stage of the world. He knew what 
he was thinking of when he said, "Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but my words shall not 
pass away." I draw near to him at such a time. 
Yet he taught mankind but imperfectly how to 
live; his thoughts were all directed toward 
another world. There is another kind of success 
than his. Even here we have a sort of living to 
get, and must buffet it somewhat longer. There 
are various tough problems yet to solve, and 



86 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

we must make shift to live, betwixt spirit and 
matter, such a human life as we can. 

A healthy man, with steady employment, as 
wood chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp 
in the woods, will not be a good subject for 
Christianity. The New Testament may be a 
choice book to him on some, but not on all or 
most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in 
his leisure hours. The apostles, though they 
were fishers too, were of the solemn race of 
sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on 
inland streams. 

Men have a singular desire to be good without 
being good for anything, because, perchance, 
they think vaguely that so it will be good for 
them in the end. The sort of morality which 
the priest inculcates is a very subtle policy, far 
finer than the politicians, and the world is very 
successfully ruled by them as the policemen. 
It is not worth the while to let our imperfections 
disturb us always. The conscience really does 
not, and ought not to, monopolize the whole of 
our lives, any more than the heart or the head. 
It is as liable to disease as any other part. I 
have seen some whose consciences, owing un- 
doubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to 
be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length 
gave them no peace. They did not know when 
to swallow their cud, and their lives of course 
yielded no milk. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 87 

Conscience is instinct bred in the house, 

Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin 

By an unnatural breeding in and in. 

I say, Turn it out doors, 

Into the moors. 

I love a life whose plot is simple, 

And does not thicken with every pimple; 

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, 

That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it. 

I love an earnest soul, 

Whose mighty joy and sorrow 

Are not drowned in a bowl, 

And brought to life to-morrow; 

That lives one tragedy, 

And not seventy; 

A conscience worth keeping, 

Laughing not weeping; 

A conscience wise and steady, 

And forever ready; 

Not changing with events, 

Dealing in compliments; 

A conscience exercised about 

Large things, where one may doubt, 

I love a soul not all of wood, 

Predestinated to be good, 

But true to the backbone 

Unto itself alone, 

And false to none; 

Born to its own affairs, 

Its own joys and own cares; 

By whom the work which God begun 

Is finished, and not undone; 

Taken up where he left off, 

Whether to worship or to scoff; 

If not good, why then evil, 

If not good god, good devil. 

Goodness ! — you hypocrite, come out of that, 

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. 



88 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I have no patience towards 
Such conscientious cowards. 
Give me simple laboring folk, 
Who love their work, 
Whose virtue is a song 
To cheer God along. 

I was once reproved by a minister who was 
driving a poor beast to some meeting-house 
horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, 
because I was bending my steps to a mountain- 
top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I 
would have gone further than he to hear a true 
word spoken on that or any day. He declared 
that I was "breaking the Lord's fourth com- 
mandment," and proceeded to enumerate, in a 
sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen 
him whenever he had done any ordinary work 
on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god 
was at work to trip up those men who followed 
any secular work on this day, and did not see 
that it was the evil conscience of the workers 
that did it. The country is full of this super- 
stition, so that when one enters a village, the 
church, not only really but from association, is 
the ugliest looking building in it, because it is 
the one in which human nature stoops the lowest 
and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples 
as these shall ere long cease to deform the land- 
scape. 

If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to 
let me speak in his pulpit on a Sunday, he would 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 89 

object, because I do not pray as he does, or 
because I am not ordained. What under the 
sun are these things? 

Really, there is no infidelity, now-a-days, so 
great as that which prays, and keeps the Sab- 
bath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of 
the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine. The 
church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and 
as full of quackery as the hospital for their 
bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pen- 
sioners in their Retreat or Sailor's Snug Harbor, 
where you may see a row of religious cripples 
sitting outside in sunny weather. Let not the 
apprehension that he may one day have to 
occupy a ward therein discourage the cheerful 
labors of the able-souled man. While he re- 
members the sick in their extremities, let him 
not look thither as to his goal. One is sick at 
heart of this pagoda worship. It is like the 
beating of gongs in a Hindoo subterranean 
temple. In dark places and dungeons the 
preacher's words might perhaps strike root and 
grow, but not in broad daylight in any part of 
the world that I know. The sound of the Sab- 
bath bell far away, now breaking on these shores, 
does not awaken pleasing associations, but mel- 
ancholy and sombre ones rather. One involun- 
tarily rests on his oar, to humor his unusually 
meditative mood. It is as the sound of many 
catechisms and religious books twanging a cant- 



90 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ing peal round the earth, seeming to issue from 
some Egyptian temple and echo along the shore 
of the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace 
and Moses in the bulrushes, startling a multi- 
tude of storks and alligators basking in the sun. 

Everywhere "good men" sound a retreat, and 
the word has gone forth to fall back on inno- 
cence. Eall forward rather on to whatever there 
is there. Christianity only hopes. It has hung 
its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song 
in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, 
and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. 
The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but 
thank Heaven, the child does not grow up in 
its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has 
not grown with her experience. Her experience 
has been too much for her. The lesson of life 
was too hard for her to learn. 

It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and 
writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner 
or later, to prove or to acknowledge the person- 
ality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking 
it better late than never, has provided for it in 
his will. It is a sad mistake. In reading a work 
on agriculture, we have to skip the author's 
moral reflections, and the words "Providence" 
and "He" scattered along the page, to come at 
the profitable level of what he has to say. What 
he calls his religion is for the most part offensive 
to the nostrils. He should know better than ex- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 91 

pose himself, and keep his foul sores covered till 
they are quite healed. There is more religion in 
men's science than there is science in their re- 
ligion. Let us make haste to the report of the 
committee on swine. 

A man's real faith is never contained in his 
creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. 
The last is never adopted. This it is that per- 
mits him to smile ever, and to live even as 
bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously 
to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that 
does him good service because his sheet anchor 
does not drag. 

In most men's religion, the ligature, which 
should be its umbilical cord connecting them 
with divinity, is rather like that thread which 
the accomplices of Cylon held in their hands 
when they went abroad from the temple of 
Minerva, the other end being attached to the 
statue of the goddess. But frequently, as in 
their case, the thread breaks, being stretched, 
and they are left without an asylum. 

"A good and pious man reclined his head on 
the bosom of contemplation, and was absorbed 
in the ocean of a re very. At the instant when 
he awaked from his vision, one of his friends, by 
way of pleasantry, said: What rare gift have 
you brought us from that garden, where you 
have been recreating? He replied; I fancied to 



92 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

myself and said, when I can reach the rose- 
bower, I will fill my lap with the flowers, and 
bring them as a present to my friends; but 
when I got there, the fragrance of the roses so 
intoxicated me, that the skirt dropped from my 
hands. — ' O bird of dawn ! learn the warmth 
of affection from the moth; for that scorched 
creature gave up the ghost, and uttered not a 
groan: These vain pretenders are ignorant of 
him they seek after; for of him that knew him 
we never heard again : — thou ! who towerest 
above the flights of conjecture, opinion, and 
comprehension; whatever has been reported of 
thee we have heard and read; the congregation 
is dismissed, and life drawn to a close; and we 
still rest at our first encomium of thee!'" — 
Sadi. 

By noon we were let down into the Merri- 
mack through the locks at Middlesex, just 
above Pawtucket Falls, by a serene and liberal- 
minded man, who came quietly from his book, 
though his duties, we supposed, did not require 
him to open the locks on Sundays. With him 
we had a just and equal encounter of the eyes, 
as between two honest men. 

The movements of the eyes express the per- 
petual and unconscious courtesy of the parties. 
It is said that a rogue does not look you in the 
face, neither does an honest man look at you 




Above Pazvt ticket Falls 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 93 

as if he had his reputation to establish. I have 
seen some who did not know when to turn aside 
their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident 
and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to con- 
tend for the mastery in such encounters. Ser- 
pents alone conquer by the steadiness of their 
gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees 
me, that is all. 

The best relations were at once established 
between us and this man, and though few words 
were spoken, he could not conceal a visible in- 
terest in us and our excursion. He was a lover 
of the higher mathematics, as we found, and in 
the midst of some vast sunny problem, when 
we overtook him and whispered our conjectures. 
By this man we were presented with the freedom 
of the Merrimack. We now felt as if we were 
fairly launched on the ocean-stream of our 
voyage, and were pleased to find that our boat 
would float on Merrimack water. We began 
again busily to put in practice those old arts of 
rowing, steering, and paddling. It seemed a 
strange phenomenon to us that the two rivers 
should mingle their waters so readily, since we 
had never associated them in our thoughts. 

As we glided over the broad bosom of the 
Merrimack, between Chelmsford and Dracut, 
at noon, here a quarter of a mile wide, the rat- 
tling of our oars was echoed over the water to 
those villages, and their slight sounds to us. 



94 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Their harbors lay as smooth and fairy-like as 
the Lido, or Syracuse, or Rhodes, in our imagina- 
tion, while, like some strange roving craft, we 
flitted past what seemed the dwellings of noble 
home-staying men, seemingly as conspicuous as 
if on an eminence, or floating upon a tide which 
came up to those villagers' breasts. At a third 
of a mile over the water we heard distinctly 
some children repeating their catechism in a 
cottage near the shore, while in the broad shal- 
lows between, a herd of cows stood lashing their 
sides, and waging war with the flies. 

Two hundred years ago other catechising than 
this was going on here; for here came the sachem 
Wannalancet, and his people, and sometimes 
Tahatawan, our Concord Sachem, who after- 
wards had a church at home, to catch fish at 
the falls; and here also came John Elliot, with 
the Bible and Catechism, and Baxter's Call to the 
Unconverted, and other tracts, done into the 
Massachusetts tongue, and taught them Chris- 
tianity meanwhile. "This place," says Gookin, 
referring to Wamesit, 

"being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, 
they come to fish; and this good man takes this 
opportunity to spread the net of the gospel, to 
fish for their souls." — "May 5th, 1674," he 
continues, "according to our usual custom, Mr. 
Eliot and myself took our journey to Wamesit, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 95 

or Pawtuckett; and arriving there that evening, 
Mr. Eliot preached to as many of them as could 
be got together, out of Matt. xxii. 1-14, the 
parable of the marriage of the king's son. We 
met at the wigwam of one called Wannalancet, 
about two miles from the town, near Pawtuckett 
falls, and bordering upon Merrimak river. This 
person, Wannalancet, is the eldest son of old 
Pasaconaway, the chiefest sachem of Pawtuckett. 
He is a sober and grave person, and of years, 
between fifty and sixty. He hath been always 
loving and friendly to the English." As yet, 
however, they had not prevailed on him to em- 
brace the Christian religion. "But at this time," 
says Gookin, "May 6, 1674," — "after some 
deliberation and serious pause, he stood up, and 
made a speech to this effect : — 'I must acknowl- 
edge I have, all my days, used to pass in an old 
canoe, (alluding to his frequent custom to pass 
in a canoe upon the river) and now you exhort 
me to change and leave my old canoe, and em- 
bark in a new canoe, to which I have hitherto 
been unwilling; but now I yield up myself to 
your advice, and enter into a new canoe, and 
do engage to pray to God hereafter." One 
"Mr. Richard Daniel, a gentleman that lived 
in Billerica," who with other "persons of qual- 
ity" was present, "desired brother Eliot to tell 
the sachem from him, that it may be, while he 
went in his «old canoe, he passed in a quiet 



96 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

stream; but the end thereof was death and de- 
struction to soul and body. But now he went 
into a new canoe, perhaps he would meet with 
storms and trials, but yet he should be en- 
couraged to persevere, for the end of his voyage 
would be everlasting rest." — "Since that time, 
I hear this sachem doth persevere, and is a con- 
stant and diligent hearer of God's word, and 
sanctifieth the Sabbath, though he doth travel 
to Wamesit meeting every Sabbath, which is 
above two miles; and though sundry of his 
people have deserted him, since he subjected to 
the gospel, yet he continues and persists." — 
Gookins Hist. Coll. of the Indians in New 
England, 1674. 

Already, as appears from the records, "At a 
General Court held at Boston in New England, 
the 7th of the first month, 1643-4." — "Was- 
samequin, Nashoonon, Kutchamaquin, Massa- 
conomet, and Squaw Sachem, did voluntarily 
submit themselves" to the English; and among 
other things did "promise to be willing from 
time to time to be instructed in the knowledge 
of God." Being asked "Not to do any unneces- 
sary work on the Sabbath day, especially within 
the gates of Christian towns," they answered, 
"It is easy to them; they have not much to do 
on any day, and they can well take their rest on 
that day." — "So," says Winthrop, in his Jour- 
nal, "we causing them to understand the articles, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 97 

and all the ten commandments of God, and they 
freely assenting to all, they were solemnly re- 
ceived, and then presented the Court with 
twenty-six fathom more of wampom; and the 
Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of 
cloth, and their dinner; and to them and their 
men, every of them, a cup of sack at their depar- 
ture; and so they took leave and went away." 

What journeying on foot and on horseback 
through the wilderness, to preach the gospel to 
these minks and muskrats! who first, no doubt, 
listened with their red ears out of a natural hos- 
pitality and courtesy, and afterward from curi- 
osity or even interest, till at length there were 
"praying Indians," and, as the General Court 
wrote to Cromwell, the "work is brought to this 
perfection, that some of the Indians themselves 
can pray and prophesy in a comfortable manner." 

It was in fact an old battle and hunting ground 
through which we had been floating, the ancient 
dwelling-place of a race of hunters and warriors. 
Their weirs of stone, their arrowheads and 
hatchets, their pestles, and the mortars in which 
they pounded Indian corn before the white man 
had tasted it, lay concealed in the mud of the 
river bottom. Tradition still points out the 
spots where they took fish in the greatest num- 
bers, by such arts as they possessed. It is a 
rapid story the historian will have to put to- 



98 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

gether. Miantonimo, — Winthrop, — Webster. 
Soon he comes from Mount Hope to Bunker 
Hill, from bear-skins, parched corn, bows and 
arrows, to tiled roofs, wheat fields, guns and 
swords. Pawtucket and Wamesit, where the 
Indians resorted in the fishing season, are now 
Lowell, the city of spindles, and Manchester of 
America, which sends its cotton cloth round the 
globe. Even we youthful voyagers had spent a 
part of our lives in the village of Chelmsford, 
when the present city, whose bells we heard, was 
its obscure north district only, and the giant 
weaver was not yet fairly born. So old are we; 
so young is it. 

We were thus entering the State of New 
Hampshire on the bosom of the flood formed by 
the tribute of its innumerable valleys. The river 
was the only key which could unlock its maze, 
presenting its hills and valleys, its lakes and 
streams, in their natural order and position. 
The Merrimack, or Sturgeon River, is formed 
by the confluence of the Pemigewasset, which 
rises near the Notch of the White Mountains, 
and the Winnepisiogee, which drains the lake of 
the same name, signifying "The Smile of the 
Great Spirit." From their junction it runs south 
seventy-eight miles to Massachusetts, and thence 
east thirty-five miles to the sea. I have traced 
its stream from where it bubbles out of the rocks 
of the White Mountains above the clouds, to 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 99 

where it is lost amid the salt billows of the ocean 
on Plum Island beach. At first it comes on mur- 
muring to itself by the base of stately and re- 
tired mountains, through moist primitive woods 
whose juices it receives, where the bear still 
drinks it, and the cabins of settlers are far be- 
tween, and there are few to cross its stream; 
enjoying in solitude its cascades still unknown 
to fame; by long ranges of mountains of Sand- 
wich and of Squam, slumbering like tumuli of 
Titans, with the peaks of Moosehillock, the 
Haystack, and Kearsarge reflected in its waters; 
where the maple and the raspberry, those lovers 
of the hills, flourish amid temperate dews; — 
flowing long and full of meaning, but untranslat- 
able as its name Pemigewasset, by many a pas- 
tured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses 
haunt, tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and 
receiving the tribute of many an untasted Hip- 
pocrene. There are earth, air, fire, and water, 
— very well, this is water, and down it comes. 

Such water do the gods distil, 
And pour down every hill 

For their New England men; 
A draught of this wild nectar bring, 
And I'll not taste the spring 

Of Helicon again. 

Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by 
the lowest fall. By the law of its birth never to 
become stagnant, for it has come out of the 



100 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

clouds, and down the sides of precipices worn in 
the flood, through beaver dams broke loose, not 
splitting but splicing and mending itself, until 
it found a breathing place in this low land. 
There is no danger now that the sun will steal 
it back to heaven again before it reach the sea, 
for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews 
into its bosom again with interest at every eve. 

It was already the water of Squam and New- 
found Lake and Winnepisiogee, and White 
Mountain snow dissolved, on which we were 
floating, and Smith's and Baker's and Mad 
rivers, and Nashua and Souhegan and Piscata- 
quoag, and Suncook and Soucook and Contoo- 
cook, mingled in incalculable proportions, still 
fluid, yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, 
ineradicable inclination to the sea. 

So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, 
at which last place it first suffers a sea change, 
and a few masts betray the vicinity of the ocean. 
Between the towns of Amesbury and Newbury 
it is a broad commercial river, from a third to 
half a mile in width, no longer skirted with 
yellow and crumbling banks, but backed by 
high green hills and pastures, with frequent 
white beaches on which the fishermen draw up 
their nets. I have passed down this portion of 
the river in a steam-boat, and it was a pleasant 
sight to watch from its deck the fishermen drag- 
ging their seines on the distant shore, as in pic- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 101 

tures of a foreign strand. At intervals you may 
meet with a schooner laden with lumber, stand- 
ing up to Haverhill, or else lying at anchor or 
aground, waiting for wind or tide; until, at last, 
you glide under the famous Chain Bridge, and 
are landed at Newburyport. Thus she who at 
first was "poore of waters, naked of renowne," 
having received so many fair tributaries, as was 
said of the Forth, 

"Doth grow the greater still, the further downe; 
Till that abounding both in power and fame, 
She long doth strive to give the sea her name;" 

or if not her name, in this case, at least the im- 
pulse of her stream. From the steeples of New- 
buryport, you may review this river stretching 
far up into the country, with many a white sail 
glancing over it like an inland sea, and behold, 
as one wrote who was born on its head- waters, 
"Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main 
blending with the blue above. Plum Island, its 
sand ridges scolloping along the horizon like the 
sea serpent, and the distant outline broken by 
many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky." 
Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, 
the Merrimack reaches the sea by a course only 
half as long, and hence has no leisure to form 
broad and fertile meadows like the former, but 
is hurried along rapids, and down numerous falls 
without long delay. The banks are generally 



102 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

steep and high, with a narrow interval reaching 
back to the hills, which is only occasionally and 
partially overflown at present, and is much 
valued by the farmers. Between Chelmsford 
and Concord in New Hampshire, it varies from 
twenty to seventy -five rods in width. It is prob- 
ably wider than it was formerly, in many places, 
owing to the trees having been cut down, and 
the consequent wasting away of its banks. The 
influence of the Pawtucket dam is felt as far up 
as Cromwell's Falls, and many think that the 
banks are being abraded and the river filled up 
again by this cause. Like all our rivers, it is 
liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has 
been known to rise twenty-five feet in a few 
hours. It is navigable for vessels of burden 
about twenty miles, for canal boats by means of 
locks as far as Concord in New Hampshire, about 
seventy -five miles from its mouth, and for smaller 
boats to Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen 
miles. A small steam-boat once plied between 
Lowell and Nashua, before the railroad was 
built, and one now runs from Newburyport to 
Haverhill. 

Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of 
commerce by the sand-bar at its mouth, see how 
this river was devoted from the first to the ser- 
vice of manufactures. Issuing from the iron 
region of Franconia, and flowing through still 
uncut forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, 




^0 



«5 



5 



e 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 103 

with Squam, and Winnepisiogee, and Newfound, 
and Massabesic lakes for its millponds, it falls 
over a succession of natural dams, where it has 
been offering its privileges in vain for ages, until 
at last the Yankee race came to improve them. 
Standing here at its mouth, look up its sparkling 
stream to its source, — a silver cascade which 
falls all the way from the White Mountains to 
the sea, — and behold a city on each successive 
plateau, a busy colony of human beaver around 
every fall. Not to mention Newbury port and 
Haverhill, see Lawrence, and Lowell, and 
Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord, gleam- 
ing one above the other. When at length it has 
escaped from under the last of the factories it has 
a level and unmolested passage to the sea, a mere 
waste water, as it were, bearing little with it but 
its fame; its pleasant course revealed by the 
morning fog which hangs over it, and the sails 
of the few small vessels which transact the com- 
merce of Haverhill and Newbury port. But its 
real vessels are railroad cars, and its true and 
main stream, flowing by an iron channel further 
south, may be traced by a long line of vapor 
amid the hills, which no morning wind ever dis- 
perses, to where it empties into the sea at 
Boston. This side is the louder murmur now. 
Instead of the scream of a fish-hawk scaring the 
fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, 
arousing a country to its progress. 



104 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

This river too was at length discovered by the 
white man, "trending up into the land," he 
knew not how far, possibly an inlet to the South 
Sea. Its valley, as far as the Winnepisiogee, 
was first surveyed in 1652. The first settlers of 
Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, 
in one part of its course, ran north-west, "so 
near the great lake as the Indians do pass their 
canoes into it over land." From which lake and 
the "hideous swamps" about it, as they sup- 
posed, came all the beaver that was traded be- 
tween Virginia and Canada, — and the Potomac 
was thought to come out of or from very near it. 
Afterward the Connecticut came so near the 
course of the Merrimack, that with a little pains 
they expected to divert the current of the 
trade into the latter river, and its profits from 
their Dutch neighbors into their own pockets. 

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a 
dead but a living stream, though it has less life 
within its waters and on its banks. It has a 
swift current, and, in this part of its course, a 
clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and compara- 
tively few fishes. We looked down into its 
yellow water with the more curiosity, who were 
accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of the 
former river. Shad and alewives are taken here 
in their season, but salmon, though at one time 
more numerous than shad, are now more rare. 
Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 105 

dams have proved more or less destructive to 
the fisheries. The shad make their appearance 
early in May, at the same time with the blos- 
soms of the pyrus, one of the most conspicuous 
early flowers, which is for this reason called the 
shad-blossom. An insect, called the shad-fly, 
also appears at the same time, covering the 
houses and fences. We are told that "their 
greatest run is when the apple trees are in full 
blossom. The old shad return in August; the 
young, three or four inches long, in September. 
These are very fond of flies." A rather pictur- 
esque and luxurious mode of fishing was for- 
merly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows 
Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. 
"On the steep sides of the island rock," says 
Belknap, "hang several arm chairs, fastened to 
ladders, and secured by a counterpoise, in which 
fishermen sit to catch salmon and shad with 
dipping nets." The remains of Indian weirs, 
made of large stones, are still to be seen in the 
Winnepisiogee, one of the head-waters of this 
river. 

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably 
to be reminded of these shoals of migratory 
fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, 
and others, which penetrate up the innumerable 
rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the 
interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; 
and again, of the fry, which in still greater num- 



106 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

bers wend their way downward to the sea. "And 
is it not pretty sport," wrote Capt. John Smith, 
who was on this coast as early as 1614, "to pull 
up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast 
as you can haul and veer a line?" — "And 
what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, 
and less hurt or charge, than angling with a 
hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, 
over the silent streams of a calm sea." 

On the sandy shore, opposite the Glass-house 
village in Chelmsford, at the Great Bend, where 
we landed to rest us and gather a few wild 
plums, we discovered the campanula rotundi- 
folia, a new flower to us, the harebell of the 
poets, which is common to both hemispheres, 
growing close to the water. Here, in the shady 
branches of an apple tree on the sand, we took 
our nooning, where there was not a zephyr to 
disturb the repose of this glorious Sabbath day, 
and we reflected serenely on the long past and 
successful labors of Latona. 

"So silent is the cessile air, 
That every cry and call, 
The hills and dales, and forest fair, 
Again repeats them all. 

"The herds beneath some leafy trees, 
Amidst the flowers they lie, 
The stable ships upon the seas 
Tend up their sails to dry." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 107 

As we thus rested in the shade, or rowed 
leisurely along, we had recourse, from time to 
time, to the Gazetteer, which was our Naviga- 
tor, and from its bald natural facts extracted 
the pleasure of poetry. Beaver river comes in 
a little lower down, draining the meadows of 
Pelham, Windham, and Londonderry. The 
Scotch-Irish settlers of the latter town, accord- 
ing to this authority, were the first to introduce 
the potato into New England, as well as the 
manufacture of linen cloth. 

Everything that is printed and bound in a 
book contains some echo at least of the best 
that is in literature. Indeed, the best books 
have a use like sticks and stones, which is above 
or beside their design, not anticipated in the 
preface, nor concluded in the appendix. Even 
Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me 
to-day from what it did to his contemporaries. 
It has often an acquired and accidental value 
merely, proving that man is still man in the 
world. It is pleasant to meet with such still 
lines as, 

"Jam laeto turgent in palmite gemmae;" 
Now the buds swell on the joyful stem; 

or 

"Strata jacent passim sua quaeque sub arbore poma." 
The apples lie scattered everywhere, each under its tree. 

In an ancient and dead language, any recog- 
nition of living nature attracts us. These are 



108 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

such sentences as were written while grass grew 
and water ran. It is no small recommendation 
when a book will stand the test of mere unob- 
structed sunshine and daylight. 

What would we not give for some great poem 
to read now, which would be in harmony with 
the scenery, — for if men read aright, methinks 
they would never read anything but poems. No 
history nor philosophy can supply their place. 

The wisest definition of poetry the poet will 
instantly prove false by setting aside its requi- 
sitions. We can, therefore, publish only our 
advertisement of it. 

There is no doubt that the loftiest written 
wisdom is either rhymed, or in some way music- 
ally measured, — is, in form as well as sub- 
stance, poetry; and a volume which should 
contain the condensed wisdom of mankind, 
need not have one rhythmless line. 

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, 
is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears 
an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a 
poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief 
and most memorable success, for history is but 
a prose narrative of poetic deeds. What else 
have the Hindoos, the Persians, the Babylon- 
ians, the Egyptians done, that can be told? It 
is the simplest relation of phenomena, and de- 
scribes the commonest sensations with more 
truth than science does, and the latter at a dis- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 109 

tance slowly mimics its style and methods. The 
poet sings how the blood flows in his veins. He 
performs his functions, and is so well that he 
needs such stimulus to sing only as plants to 
put forth leaves and blossoms. He would 
strive in vain to modulate the remote and tran- 
sient music which he sometimes hears, since his 
song is a vital function like breathing, and an 
integral result like weight. It is not the over- 
flowing of life but of its subsidence rather, and 
is drawn from under the feet of the poet. It is 
enough if Homer but say the sun sets. He is 
as serene as nature, and we can hardly detect 
the enthusiasm of the bard. It is as if nature 
spoke. He presents to us the simplest pictures 
of human life, so that childhood itself can un- 
derstand them, and the man must not think 
twice to appreciate his naturalness. Each reader 
discovers for himself, that, with respect to the 
simpler features of nature, succeeding poets 
have done little else than copy his similes. His 
more memorable passages arenas naturally bright, 
as gleams of sunshine in misty weather. Nature 
furnishes him not only with words, but with 
stereotyped lines and sentences from her mint. 

"As from the clouds appears the full moon, 
All shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds, 
So Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost, 
And at another in the rear, commanding; and all with brass 
He shone, like to the lightning of segis-bearing Zeus." 



110 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

He conveys the least information, even the 
hour of the day, with such magnificence and 
vast expense of natural imagery, as if it were a 
message from the gods. 

"While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing, 
For that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people fell; 
But when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal, 
In the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands 
With cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind, 
And the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts; 
Then the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes, 
Shouting to their companions from rank to rank." 

When the army of the Trojans passed the 
night under arms, keeping watch lest the enemy 
should re-embark under cover of the dark, 

'They, thinking great things, upon the neutral ground of war 
Sat all the night; and many fires burned for them. 
As when in the heavens the stars round the bright moon 
Appear beautiful, and the air is without wind; 
And all the heights, and the extreme summits, 
And the wooded sides of the mountains appear; and from the 

heavens an infinite ether is diffused, 
And all the stars are seen; and the shepherd rejoices in his heart; 
So between the ships and the streams of Xanthus 
Appeared the fires of the Trojans before Ilium. 
A thousand fires burned on the plain; and by each 
Sat fifty, in the light of the blazing fire; 
And horses eating white barley and corn, 
Standing by the chariots, awaited fair-throned Aurora." 

The "white-armed goddess Juno," sent by 
the Father of gods and men for Iris and Apollo, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 111 

"Went down the Idaean mountains to far Olympus, 
As when the mind of a man, who has come over much earth, 
Sallies forth, and he reflects with rapid thoughts, 
There was I, and there, and remembers many things; 
So swiftly the august Juno hastening flew through the air, 
And came to high Olympus." 

His scenery is always true, and not invented. 
He does not leap in imagination from Asia to 
Greece, through mid air, 

iireiT] /jL&\a iroXXa fiera^i 



"Ovped re anioiuTCL, dcikdaaa. re rfxJ)£CGa. 

for there are very many 
Shady mountains and resounding seas between. 

If his messengers repair but to the tent of 
Achilles, we do not wonder how they got there, 
but accompany them step by step along the 
shore of the resounding sea. Nestor's account 
of the march of the Pylians against the Epeians 
is extremely lifelike. — 

"Then rose up to them sweet- worded Nestor, the shrill orator 
of the Pylians, 
And words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue." 

This time, however, he addresses Patroclus 
alone. — "A certain river, Minyas by name, 
leaps seaward near to Arene, where we Pylians 
wait the dawn, both horse and foot. Thence 
with all haste we sped as on the morrow ere 
't was noon-day, accoutred for the fight, even 
to Alpheus' sacred source, &c." We fancy that 



112 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

we hear the subdued murmuring of the Minyas 
discharging its waters into the main the live- 
long night, and the hollow sound of the waves 
breaking on the shore, — until at length we are 
cheered at the close of a toilsome march by the 
gurgling fountains of Alpheus. 

There are few books which are fit to be re- 
membered in our wisest hours, but the Iliad is 
brightest in the serenest days, and embodies 
still all the sunlight that fell on Asia Minor. 
No modern joy or ecstasy of ours can lower its 
height, or dim its lustre, but there it lies in the 
east of literature, as it were the earliest and 
latest production of the mind. The ruins of 
Egypt oppress and stifle us with their dust, 
foulness preserved in cassia and pitch, and 
swathed in linen; the death of that which never 
lived. But the rays of Greek poetry struggle 
down to us, and mingle with the sunbeams of 
the recent day. The statute of Memnon is cast 
down, but the shaft of the Iliad still meets the 
sun in his rising. — 

"Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where 
The rival cities seven? His song outlives 
Time, tower, and god, — all that then was save Heaven." 

So too, no doubt, Homer had his Homer, and 
Orpheus his Orpheus, in the dim antiquity which 
preceded them. The mythological system of 
the ancients, and it is still the mythology of the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 113 

moderns, the poem of mankind, interwoven so 
wonderfully with their astronomy, and match- 
ing in grandeur and harmony the architecture 
of the heavens themselves, seems to point to a 
time when a mightier genius inhabited the earth. 
But after all, man is the great poet, and not 
Homer or Shakspeare; and our language itself, 
and the common arts of life are his work. Po- 
etry is so universally true and independent of 
experience, that it does not need any particu- 
lar biography to illustrate it, but we refer it 
sooner or later to some Orpheus or Linus, and 
after ages to the genius of humanity, and the 
gods themselves. 

It would be worth the while to select our 
reading, for books are the society we keep; to 
read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor 
fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, 
but only great poems, and when they failed, 
read them again, or perchance write more. In- 
stead of other sacrifice, we might offer up our 
perfect (reXeta) thoughts to the gods daily, in 
hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm 
at least once a day. The whole of the day should 
not be day-time; there should be one hour, if 
no more, which the day did not bring forth. 
Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a 
mess of learning. But is it necessary to know 
what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless 



114 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

study, or the idle read, the literature of the 
Russians and the Chinese, or even French 
philosophy and much of German criticism. 
Read the best books first, or you may not have 
a chance to read them at all. "There are the 
worshippers with offerings, and the worshippers 
with mortifications; and again the worshippers 
with enthusiastic devotion; so there are those, 
the wisdom of whose reading is their worship, 
men of subdued passions, and severe manners; — 
This world is not for him who doth not worship; 
and where, O Arjoon, is there another?" Cer- 
tainly, we do not need to be soothed and enter- 
tained always like children. He who resorts to 
the easy novel, because he is languid, does no 
better than if he took a nap. The front aspect 
of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those 
who stand on the side whence they arrive. 
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoy- 
ment, but in which each thought is of unusual 
daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a 
timid one would not be entertained by, which 
even make us dangerous to existing institutions, 
— such call I good books. 

All that are printed and bound are not books; 
they do not necessarily belong to letters, but 
are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries 
and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are 
palmed off under a thousand disguises. ''The 
way to trade," as a pedler once told me, "is to 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 115 

put it right through," no matter what it is, any- 
thing that is agreed on. — 

"You grov'ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades 
Where light ne'er shot his golden ray." 

By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are 
cunningly compiled, and have their run and 
success even among the learned, as if they were 
the result of a new man's thinking, and their 
birth were attended with some natural throes. 
But in a little while their covers fall off, for no 
binding will avail, and it appears that they are 
not Books or Bibles at all. There are new and 
patented inventions in this shape, purporting 
to be for the elevation of the race, which many 
a pure scholar and genius who has learned to 
read is for a moment deceived by, and finds 
himself reading a horse-rake, or spinning jenny, 
or wooden nutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar, or steam- 
power press, or kitchen range, perchance, when 
he was seeking serene and biblical truths. — 

"Merchants, arise, 
And mingle conscience with your merchandise." 

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase 
one book before they write another. Instead 
of cultivating the earth for wheat and potatoes, 
they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the 
Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write 
for fame merely, as others actually raise crops 
of grain to be distilled into brandy. Books are 



116 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

for the most part wilfully and hastily written, 
as parts of a system, to supply a want real or 
imagined. Books of natural history aim com- 
monly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of 
God's property, by some clerk. They do not in 
the least teach the divine view of nature, but 
the popular view, or rather the popular method 
of studying nature, and make haste to conduct 
the persevering pupil only into that dilemma 
where the professors always dwell. — 

"To Athens gown'd he goes, and from that school 
Returns unsped, a more instructed fool." 

They teach the elements really of ignorance, 
not of knowledge, for to speak deliberately and 
in view of the highest truths, it is not easy to 
distinguish elementary knowledge. There is a 
chasm between knowledge and ignorance which 
the arches of science can never span. A book 
should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of 
terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, 
and not the art of navigation by those who have 
never been out of sight of land. They must not 
yield wheat and potatoes, but must themselves 
be the unconstrained and natural harvest of 
their author's lives. — 

"What I have learned is mine; I've had my thought, 
And me the Muses noble truths have taught." 

We do not learn much from learned books, 
but from true, sincere, human books, from frank 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 117 

and honest biographies. The life of a good man 
will hardly improve us more than the life of a 
freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as 
plainly in the infringement as in the observance, 
and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal 
expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying 
tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and 
rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap 
and performs the functions of health. If we 
choose, we may study the alburnum only. The 
gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling. 
At least let us have healthy books, a stout 
horse-rake or a kitchen range which is not cracked. 
Let not the poet shed tears only for the public 
weal. He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, 
with sap enough to maintain his own verdure, 
beside what runs into the troughs, and not like 
a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no 
fruit, but bleeds to death in the endeavor to 
heal its wounds. The poet is he that hath fat 
enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his 
claws all winter. He hibernates in this world, 
and feeds on his own marrow. It is pleasant to 
think in winter, as we walk over the snowy 
pastures, of those happy dreamers that lie under 
the sod, of dormice and all that race of dormant 
creatures, which have such a superfluity of life 
enveloped in thick folds of fur, impervious to 
cold. Alas, the poet too is, in one sense, a sort 
of dormouse gone into winter quarters of deep 



118 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and serene thoughts, insensible to surrounding 
circumstances; his words are the relation of his 
oldest and finest memory, a wisdom drawn from 
the remotest experience. Other men lead a 
starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks, that 
would fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick 
up a sparrow now and then. 

There are already essays and poems, the 
growth of this land, which are not in vain, all 
which, however, we could conveniently have 
stowed in the till of our chest. If the gods per- 
mitted their own inspiration to be breathed in 
vain, these might be overlooked in the crowd, 
but the accents of truth are as sure to be heard 
at last on earth as in heaven. They already 
seem ancient, and in some measure have lost 
the traces of their modern birth. Here are they 
who 

"ask for that which is our whole life's light, 



For the perpetual, true, and clear insight." 

I remember a few sentences which spring like 
the sward in its native pasture, where its roots 
were never disturbed, and not as if spread over 
a sandy embankment; answering to the poet's 
prayer, 

"Let us set so just 
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust 
The poet's sentence, and not still aver 
Each art is to itself a flatterer." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 119 

But, above all, in our native port, did we not 
frequent the peaceful games of the Lyceum, 
from which a new era will be dated to New 
England, as from the games of Greece. For if 
Herodotus carried his history to Olympia to 
read, after the cestus and the race, have we not 
heard such histories recited there, which since 
our countrymen have read, as made Greece 
sometimes to be forgotten? — Philosophy, too, 
has there her grove and portico, not wholly 
unfrequented in these days. 

Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, 
has won another palm, contending with 

"Olympian bards who sung 
Divine ideas below, 
Which always find us young, 
And always keep us so." — 

What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or 
Muses' spring or grove, is safe from his all- 
searching ardent eye, who drives off Phoebus' 
beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the 
gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar ser- 
pent writhe, and many a Nile flow back and hide 
his head ! — 

That Phaeton of our day, 
Who'd make another milky way, 
And burn the world up with his ray; 

By us an undisputed seer, — 
Who'd drive his flaming car so near 
Unto our shuddering mortal sphere, 



120 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Disgracing all our slender worth, 
And scorching up the living earth, 
To prove his heavenly birth. 

The silver spokes, the golden tire, 
Are glowing with unwonted fire, 
And ever nigher roll and nigher; 

The pins and axle melted are, 

The silver radii fly afar, 

Ah, he will spoil his Father's car! 

Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer? 
Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year. 
And we shall Ethiops all appear. 

From his 



"lips of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle." 

And yet, sometimes, 

We should not mind if on our ear there fell 
Some less of cunning, more of oracle. 

It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Con- 
temporary, let us have faroff heats. Give us the 
subtler, the heavenlier though fleeting beauty, 
which passes through and through, and dwells 
not in the verse; even pure water, which but 
reflects those tints which wine wears in its 
grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, and cease this 
waltz of inspirations. Let us oftener feel even 
the gentle south-west wind upon our cheeks 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 121 

blowing from the Indians' heaven. What though 
we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if 
skyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable 
nebulae remain? What though we lose a thou- 
sand wise responses of the oracle, if we may 
have instead some natural acres of Ionian 
earth? 

Though we know well, 

'That 't is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise 
A spirit for verse that is not born thereto, 
Nor are they born in every prince's days;" 

yet spite of all they sang in praise of their 
"Eliza's reign," we have evidence that poets 
may be born and sing in our day, in the presi- 
dency of James K. Polk, 

"And that the utmost powers of English rhyme," 
Were not "within her peaceful reign confined." 

The prophecy of Samuel Daniel is already how 
much more than fulfilled! ' 

"And who in time knows whither we may vent 
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores 
This gain of our best glory shall be sent, 
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores? 
What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident, 
May come refined with the accents that are ours." 

Enough has been said in these days of the 
charm of fluent writing. We hear it complained 
of some works of genius, that they have fine 



122 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. 
But even the mountain peaks in the horizon 
are, to the eye of science, parts of one range. 
We should consider that the flow of thought is 
more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and 
is the result of a celestial influence, not of any 
declivity in its channel. The river flows because 
it runs down hill, and descends the faster as it 
flows more rapidly. The reader who expects to 
float down stream for the whole voyage, may 
well complain of nauseating swells and choppings 
of the sea when his frail shore-craft gets amidst 
the billows of the ocean stream, which flows as 
much to sun and moon as lesser streams to it. 
But if we would appreciate the flow that is in 
these books, we must expect to feel it rise from 
the page like an exhalation, and wash away our 
critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to 
higher levels above and behind ourselves. There 
is many a book which ripples on like a freshet, 
and flows as glibly as a mill stream sucking under 
a causeway; and when their authors are in the 
full tide of their discourse, Pythagoras, and 
Plato, and Jamblichus, halt beside them. Their 
long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that consist- 
ency that they naturally flow and run together. 
They read as if written for military men, for 
men of business, there is such a despatch in them. 
Compared with these, the grave thinkers and 
philosophers seem not to have got their swad- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 123 

dling clothes off; they are slower than a Roman 
army in its march, the rear camping to-night 
where the van camped last night. The wise 
Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery 
slough. 

"How many thousand, never heard the name 
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books? 
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame, 

And seem to bear down all the world with looks." 

The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, 
Forward! Alamo and Fanning! and after rolls 
the tide of war. The very walls and fences seem 
to travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow 
after all, — and thither you and I, at least, 
reader, will not follow. 

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is 
extremely rare. For the most part we miss the 
hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we 
could be satisfied with the dews of the morning 
or evening without their colors, or the heavens 
without their azure. The most attractive sen- 
tences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest 
and roundest. They are spoken firmly and con- 
clusively, as if the speaker had a right to know 
what he says, and if not wise, they have at least 
been well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might 
well be studied if only for the excellence of his 
style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so 
many masters. There is a natural emphasis in 



124 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

his style, like a man's tread, and a breathing 
space between the sentences, which the best of 
modern writing does not furnish. His chapters 
are like English parks, or say rather like a 
western forest, where the larger growth keeps 
down the underwood, and one may ride on 
horse-back through the openings. All the dis- 
tinguished writers of that period, possess a 
greater vigor and naturalness than the more 
modern, — for it is allowed to slander our own 
time, — and when we read a quotation from 
one of them in the midst of a modern author, 
we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener 
ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. 
It is as if a green bough were laid across the 
page, and we are refreshed as by the sight of 
fresh grass in mid-winter or early spring. You 
have constantly the warrant of life and experi- 
ence in what you read. The little that is said is 
eked out by implication of the much that was 
done. The sentences are verduous and bloom- 
ing as evergreen and flowers, because they are 
rooted in fact and experience, but our false 
and florid sentences have only the tints of 
flowers without their sap or roots. All men are 
really most attracted by the beauty of plain 
speech, and they even write in a florid style in 
imitation of this. They prefer to be misunder- 
stood rather than to come short of its exuberance. 
Hussein Effendi praised the epistolary style of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 125 

Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, 
because of "the difficulty of understanding it; 
there was," he said, "but one person at Jidda 
who was capable of understanding and explain- 
ing the Pasha's correspondence." A man's whole 
life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is 
its net result. Every sentence is the result of a 
long probation. Where shall we look for stan- 
dard English, but to the words of a standard 
man? The word which is best said came nearest 
to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a 
deed which the speaker could have better done. 
Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a 
deed by some urgent necessity, even by some 
misfortune, so that the truest writer will be 
some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the 
fates had such a design, when, having stored 
Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and 
experience, they made him a fast prisoner, and 
compelled him to make his words his deeds, and 
transfer to his expression the emphasis and sin- 
cerity of his action. 

Men have a respect for scholarship and learn- 
ing greatly out of proportion to the use they 
commonly serve. We are amused to read how 
Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks with 
which the royal family and nobility were to be 
entertained, should be "grounded upon antiq- 
uity and solid learning." Can there be any 
greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn 



126 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

to split wood, at least. The necessity of labor 
and conversation with many men and things, 
to the scholar is rarely well remembered; steady 
labor with the hands, which engrosses the atten- 
tion also, is unquestionably the best method of 
removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's 
style, both of speaking and writing. If he has 
worked hard from morning till night, though he 
may have grieved that he could not be watching 
the train of his thoughts during that time, yet 
the few hasty lines which at evening record his 
day's experience will be more musical and true 
than his freest but idle fancy could have fur- 
nished. Surely the writer is to address a world 
of laborers, and such therefore must be his own 
discipline. He will not idly dance at his work 
who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall 
in the short days of winter; but every stroke 
will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the 
wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar's 
pen, which at evening record the story of the 
day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the 
reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died 
away. The scholar may be sure that he writes 
the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. 
They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the 
mind never makes a great and successful effort 
without a corresponding energy of the body. 
We are often struck by the force and precision 
of style to which hard-working men, unprac- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 127 

tised in writing, easily attain, when required to 
make the effort. As if plainness, and vigor, and 
sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better 
learned on the farm and in the workshop than 
in the schools. The sentences written by such 
rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened 
thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of 
the pine. As for the graces of expression, a 
great thought is never found in a mean dress; 
but though it proceed from the lips of the Wol- 
offs, the nine Muses and the three Graces will 
have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its 
education has always been liberal, and its implied 
wit can endow a college. The scholar might 
frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis 
of the farmer's call to his team, and confess that 
if that were written it would surpass his labored 
sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences? 
From the weak and flimsy periods of the politi- 
cian and literary man, we are glad to turn even 
to the description of work, the simple record of 
the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to 
restore our tone and spirits. A sentence should 
read as if its author, had he held a plow instead 
of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and 
straight to the end. The scholar requires hard 
and serious labor to give an impetus to his 
thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly 
so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an 
axe or a sword. When we consider the weak and 



128 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

nerveless periods of some literary men, who 
perchance in feet and inches come up to the 
standard of their race, and are not deficient in 
girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacri- 
fice of thews and sinews. What! these propor- 
tions, — these bones, — and this their work ! 
Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed 
this fragile matter which would not have tasked 
a lady's fingers! Can this be a stalwart man's 
work, who has a marrow in his back and a tendon 
Achilles in his heel? They who set up the blocks 
of Stonehenge did somewhat, if they only laid 
out their strength for once, and stretched them- 
selves. 

Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will 
not crowd his day with work, but will saunter to 
his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and 
leisure, and then do but what he loves best. He 
is anxious only about the fruitful kernels of 
time. Though the hen should sit all day, she 
could lay only one egg, and, besides, w T ould not 
have picked up materials for another. Let a 
man take time enough for the most trivial deed, 
though it be but the paring of his nails. The 
buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or con- 
fusion, as if the short spring days were an eter- 
nity. — 

Then spend an age in whetting thy desire, 
Thou need'st not hasten if thou dost standfast. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 129 

Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, 
but for resolves to draw breath in. We do not 
directly go about the execution of the purpose 
that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and 
ramble with prepared mind, as if the half were 
already done. Our resolution is taking root or 
hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a 
shoot downward which is fed by their own 
albumen, ere they send one upward to the light. 

There is a sort of homely truth and natural- 
ness in some books which is very rare to find, 
and yet looks cheap enough. There may be 
nothing lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the 
expression, but it is careless country talk. Home- 
liness is almost as great a merit in a book as in 
a house, if the reader would abide there. It is 
next to beauty, and a very high art. Some 
have this merit only. The scholar is not apt 
to make his most familiar experience come grace- 
fully to the aid of his expression. Very few men 
can speak of Nature, for instance, with any 
truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow 
or other, and confer no favor. They do not 
speak a good word for her. Most cry better 
than speak, and you can get more nature out 
of them by pinching than by addressing them. 
The surliness with which the woodchopper 
speaks of his woods, handling them as indif- 
ferently as his axe, is better than the mealy- 



130 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of Nature. 
Better than the primrose by the river's brim be 
a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that 
it be something less. Aubrey relates of Thomas 
Fuller that his was " a very working head, inso- 
much that, walking and meditating before dinner, 
he would eat up a penny loaf, not knowing that 
he did it. His natural memory was very great, 
to which he added the art of memory. He 
would repeat to you forwards and backwards 
all the signs from Ludgate to Charing-cross." 
He says of Mr. John Hales, that " He loved 
Canarie," and was buried " under an altar 

monument of black marble with a too 

long epitaph;" of Edmund Halley, that he, 
"at sixteen could make a dial, and then, he said, 
he thought himself a brave fellow;" of William 
Holder, who wrote a book upon his curing one 
Popham who was deaf and dumb, " he was be- 
holding to no author; did only consult with 
Nature." For the most part, an author con- 
sults only with all who have written before him 
upon a subject, and his book is but the advice 
of so many. But a good book will never have 
been forestalled, but the topic itself will in one 
sense be new, and its author, by consulting with 
Nature, will consult not only with those who 
have gone before, but with those who may come 
after. There is always room and occasion 
enough for a true book on any subject; as 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 131 

there is room for more light the brightest day 
and more rays will not interfere with the first. 

We thus worked our way up this river, grad- 
ually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, be- 
holding from its placid bosom a new nature and 
new works of men, and as it were with increasing 
confidence, finding Nature still habitable, genial, 
and propitious to us; not following any beaten 
path, but the windings of the river, as ever the 
nearest way for us. Fortunately we had no 
business in this country. The Concord had 
rarely been a river or rivus, but barely fluvius, or 
between fluvius and lacus. This Merrimack was 
neither rivus nor fiuvius nor lacus, but rather am- 
uis here, a gently swelling and stately rolling flood 
approaching the sea. We could even sympa- 
thize with its buoyant tide, going to seek its 
fortune in the ocean, and anticipating the time 
when " being received within the plain of its 
freer water," it should " beat the shores for 
banks," — 

"campoque recepta 
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant." 

At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, 
called Rabbit Island, subjected alternately to 
the sun and to the waves, as desolate as if it lay 
some leagues within the icy sea, and found our- 
selves in a narrower part of the river, near the 



132 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

sheds and yards for picking the stone known as 
the Chelmsford granite, which is quarried in 
Chelmsford and the neighboring towns. We 
passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy 
acres or more, on our right between Chelmsford 
and Tyngsboro'. This was a favorite residence 
of the Indians. According to the History of 
Dunstable, " About 1663, the eldest son of 
Passaconaway [Chief of the Penacooks] was 
thrown into jail for a debt of £45, due to John 
Tinker, by one of his tribe, and which he had 
promised verbally should be paid. To relieve 
him from his imprisonment, his brother Wan- 
nalancet and others, who owned Wicasuck 
Island, sold it and paid the debt." It was, 
however, restored to the Indians by the General 
Court in 1665. After the departure of the Indi- 
ans in 1683, it was granted to Jonathan Tyng 
in payment for his services to the colony, in 
maintaining a garrison at his house. Tyng's 
house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Goo- 
kin, who, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert 
Boyle, apologizes for presenting his "matter 
clothed in a wilderness dress," says that on 
the breaking out of Philip's war in 1675, there 
were taken up by the Christian Indians and the 
English in Marlborough, and sent to Cambridge, 
seven " Indians belonging to Narragansett, 
Long Island, and Pequod, who had all been at 
work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jonathan 




p 






AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 133 

Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River; 
and hearing of the war, they reckoned with 
their master, and getting their wages, conveyed 
themselves away without his privity, and being 
afraid, marched secretly through the woods, 
designing to go to their own country." How- 
ever, they were released soon after. Such were 
the hired men in those days. Tyng was the 
first permanent settler of Dunstable, which 
then embraced what is now Tyngsboro' and 
many other towns. In the winter of 1675, in 
Philip's war, every other settler left the town, 
but " he," says the historian of Dunstable, 
"fortified his house; and although 'obliged to 
send to Boston for his food, ' sat himself down in 
the midst of his savage enemies, alone, in the 
wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming his 
position an important one for the defence of the 
frontiers, in Feb. 1676, he petitioned the Colony 
for aid," humbly showing, as his petition runs, 
that as he lived " in the uppermost house on 
Merrimac River, lying open to ye enemy, yet 
being so seated that it is, as it were, a watch- 
house to the neighboring towns," he could ren- 
der important service to his country if only he 
had some assistance, " there being," he said, 
" never an inhabitant left in the town but my- 
self." Wherefore he requests that their "Hon- 
ors would be pleased to order him three or four 
men to help garrison his said house," which 



134 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

they did. But methinks that such a garrison 
would be weakened by the addition of a man. — 

"Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief, 
Make courage for life, to be captain chief; 
Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin, 
Make gunstone and arrow shew who is within." 

Thus he earned the title of first permanent 
settler. In 1694 a law was passed " that every 
settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians, 
should forfeit all his rights therein." But 
now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, 
a man may desert the fertile frontier territories 
of truth and justice, which are the State's best 
lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, 
without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. 
Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and 
the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined 
to regard it, is but a deserters' camp itself. 

As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck 
Island, which was then covered with wood, in 
order to avoid the current, two men, who looked 
as if they had just run out of Lowell, where they 
had been waylaid by the Sabbath, meaning to 
go to Nashua, and who now found themselves 
in the strange, natural, uncultivated and unset- 
tled part of the globe which intervenes, full of 
walls and barriers, a rough and uncivil place to 
them, seeing our boat moving so smoothly up 
the stream, called out from the high bank above 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 135 

our heads to know if we would take them as 
passengers, as if this were the street they had 
missed; that they might sit and chat and drive 
away the time, and so at last find themselves 
in Nashua. This smooth way they much pre- 
ferred. But our boat was crowded with neces- 
sary furniture, and sunk low in the water, and 
moreover required to be worked, for even it did 
not progress against the stream without effort; 
so we were obliged to deny them passage. As 
we glided away with even sweeps, while the 
fates scattered oil in our course, the', sun now 
sinking behind the alders on the distant shore, 
we could still see them far off over the water, 
running along the shore and climbing over the 
rocks and fallen trees like insects, — for they 
did not know any better than we that they were 
on an island, — the unsympathizing river ever 
flowing in an opposite direction; until, having 
reached the entrance of the Island Brook, which 
they had probably crossed upon the locks below, 
they found a more effectual barrier to their 
progress. They seemed to be learning much 
in a little time. They ran about like ants on a 
burning brand, and once more they tried the 
river here, and once more there, to see if water 
still indeed was not to be walked on, as if a new 
thought inspired them, and by some peculiar 
disposition of the limbs they could accomplish 
it. At length sober common sense seemed 



136 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

to have resumed its sway, and they concluded 
that what they had so long heard must be true, 
and resolved to ford the shallower stream. When 
nearly a mile distant we could see them stripping 
off their clothes and preparing for this experi- 
ment; yet it seemed likely that a new dilemma 
would arise, they were so thoughtlessly throwing 
away their clothes on the wrong side of the 
stream, as in the case of the countryman with 
his corn, his fox, and his goose, which had to be 
transported one at a time. Whether they got 
safely through, or went round by the locks we 
never learned. We could not help being struck 
by the seeming, though innocent indifference 
of Nature to these men's necessities, while else- 
where she was equally serving others. Like a 
true benefactress, the secret of her service is 
unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, 
though within sight of his Lowell, put to pil- 
grim's shifts and soon comes to staff and scrip 
and scallop shell. 

We, too, who held the middle of the stream, 
came near experiencing a pilgrim's fate, being 
tempted to pursue what seemed a sturgeon or 
larger fish, for we remembered that this was the 
Sturgeon river, its dark and monstrous back 
alternately rising and sinking in mid-stream. 
We kept falling behind, but the fish kept his 
back well out, and did not dive, and seemed to 
prefer to swim against the stream, so, at any 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 137 

rate, he would not escape us by going out to 
sea. At length, having got as near as was con- 
venient, and looking out not to get a blow from 
his tail, now the bow-gunner delivered his charge, 
while the stern-man held his ground. But the 
halibut-skinned monster, in one of these swift- 
gliding pregnant moments, without ever ceasing 
his bobbing up and down, saw fit, without a 
chuckle or other prelude, to proclaim himself a 
huge imprisoned spar, placed there as a buoy, 
to warn sailors of sunken rocks. So, each cast- 
ing some blame upon the other, we withdrew 
quickly to safer waters. 

The Scene-shifter saw fit here to close the 
drama of this day, without regard to any unities 
which we mortals prize. Whether it might 
have proved tragedy, or comedy, or tragi- 
comedy or pastoral, we cannot tell. This Sun- 
day ended by the going down of the sun, leaving 
us still on the waves. But they who are on the 
water enjoy a longer and brighter twilight than 
they who are on the land, for here the water, as 
well as the atmosphere, absorbs and reflects the 
light, and some of the day seems to have sunk 
down into the waves. The light gradually 
forsook the deep water, as well as the deeper 
air, and the gloaming came to the fishes as well 
as to us, and more dim and gloomy to them, 
whose day is a perpetual twilight, though suffi- 
ciently bright for their weak and watery eyes. 



138 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Vespers had already rung in many a dim and 
watery chapel down below, where the shadows 
of the weeds were extended in length over the 
sandy floor. The vespertinal pout had already 
begun to flit on leathern fin, and the finny 
gossips withdrew from the fluvial street to creeks 
and coves, and other private haunts, excepting 
a few of stronger fin, which anchored in the 
stream, stemming the tide even in their dreams. 
Meanwhile, like a dark evening cloud, we were 
wafted over the cope of their sky, deepening 
the shadows on their deluged fields. 

Having reached a retired part of the river 
where it spread out to sixty rods in width, we 
pitched our tent on the east side, in Tyngsboro', 
just above some patches of the beach plum, 
which was now nearly ripe, where the sloping 
bank was a sufficient pillow, and with the bustle 
of sailors making the land, we transferred such 
stores as were required from boat to tent, and 
hung a lantern to the tent-pole, and so our house 
was ready. With a buffalo spread on the grass, 
and a blanket for our covering, our bed was soon 
made. A fire crackled merrily before the en- 
trance, so near that we could tend it without 
stepping abroad, and when we had supped, we 
put out the blaze, and closed the door, and with 
the semblance of domestic comfort, sat up to 
read the gazetteer, to learn our latitude and 
longitude, and write the journal of the voyage, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 139 

or listened to the wind and the rippling of the 
river till sleep overtook us. There we lay under 
an oak on the bank of the stream, near to some 
farmer's corn-field, getting sleep, and forgetting 
where we were; a great blessing, that we are 
obliged to forget our enterprises every twelve 
hours. Minks, muskrats, meadow-mice, wood- 
chucks, squirrels, skunks, rabbits, foxes and 
weasles, ail inhabit near, but keep very close 
while you are there. The river sucking and 
eddying away all night down toward the marts 
and the seaboard, a great work and freshet, and 
no small enterprise to reflect on. Instead of the 
Scythian vastness of the Billerica night, and its 
wild musical sounds, we were kept awake by 
the boisterous sport of some Irish laborers on 
the railroad, wafted to us over the water, still 
unwearied and unresting on this seventh day, 
who would not have done with whirling up and 
down the track with ever increasing velocity 
and still reviving shouts, till late in the night. 

One sailor was visited in his dreams this 
night by the Evil Destinies, and all those powers 
that are hostile to human life, which constrain 
and oppress the minds of men, and make their 
path seem difficult and narrow, and beset with 
dangers, so that the most innocent and worthy 
enterprises appear insolent and a tempting of 
fate, and the gods go not with us. But the 
other happily passed serene and even ambrosial 



140 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

or immortal night, and his sleep was dreamless, 
or only the atmosphere of pleasant dreams re- 
mained, a happy natural sleep until the morning, 
and his cheerful spirit soothed and reassured 
his brother, for whenever they meet, the Good 
Genius is sure to prevail. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 141 



MONDAY 

"I thynke for to touche also 
The worlde whiche neweth everie daie, 
So as I can, so as I maie." — Gower. 

"Gazed on the Heavens for what he missed on Earth." 

Britannia's Pastorals. 

WHEN the first light dawned on the earth, 
and the birds awoke, and the brave 
river was heard rippling confidently 
seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rus- 
tled the oak leaves about our tent, all men, having 
reinforced their bodies and their souls with 
sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were in- 
vited to unattempted adventures. 

One of us took the boat over to the opposite 
shore, which was flat and accessible, a quarter 
of a mile distant, to empty it of water and wash 
out the clay, while the other kindled a fire and 
got breakfast ready. At an early hour we were 
again on our way, rowing through the fog as 
before, the river already awake, and a million 
crisped waves come forth to meet the sun when 
he should show himself. The countrymen, re- 
cruited by their day of rest, were already stirring, 
and had begun to cross the ferry on the business 



142 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of the week. This ferry was as busy as a beaver 
dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get 
across the Merrimack River at this particular 
point, waiting to get set over, — children with 
their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds 
broke loose and constable with warrant, travel- 
lers from distant lands to distant lands, men and 
women to whom the Merrimack River was a 
bar. There stands a gig in the gray morning, 
in the mist, the impatient traveller pacing the 
wet shore with whip in hand, and shouting 
through the fog after the regardless Charon and 
his retreating ark, as if he might throw that 
passenger overboard and return forthwith for 
himself; he will compensate him. He is to 
break his fast at some unseen place on the oppo- 
site side. It may be Ledyard or the Wandering 
Jew. Whence pray did he come "out of the 
foggy night? and whither through the sunny 
day will he go? We observe only his transit; 
important to us, forgotten by him, transiting 
all day. There are two of them. May be, 
they are Virgil and Dante. But when they 
crossed the Styx, none were seen bound up or 
down the stream, that I remember. It is only 
a transjectus, a transitory voyage, like life it- 
self, none but the long-lived gods bound up or 
down the stream. Many of these Monday men 
are ministers, no doubt, reseeking their parishes 
with hired horses, with sermons in their valises 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 143 

all read and gutted, the day after never with 
them. They cross each other's routes all the 
country over like woof and warp, making a 
garment of loose texture; vacation now for six 
days. They stop to pick nuts and berries, and 
gather apples by the wayside at their leisure. 
Good religious men, with the love of men in 
their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in 
their pockets. We got over this ferry chain 
without scraping, rowing athwart the tide of 
travel, — no toll from us that day. 

The fog dispersed and we rowed leisurely 
along through Tyngsboro', with a clear sky 
and a mild atmosphere, leaving the habitations 
of men behind and penetrating yet further into 
the territory of ancient Dunstable. It was from 
Dunstable, then a frontier town, that the famous 
Capt. Lovewell, with his company, marched in 
quest of the Indians on the 18th of April, 1725. 
He was the son of "an ensign in the army of 
Oliver Cromwell, who came to this country, and 
settled at Dunstable, where he died at the 
great age of one hundred and twenty years." 
In the words of the old nursery tale, sung about 
a hundred years ago, — 

"He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide, 
And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride." 

In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met 
the "rebel Indians," and prevailed, after a bloody 



144 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

fight, and a remnant returned home to enjoy 
the fame of their victory. A township called 
Lovewell's Town, but now, for some reason, or 
perhaps without reason, Pembroke, was granted 
them by the State. 

"Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four, 
And of the rebel Indians, there were about four score; 
And sixteen of our English did safely home return, 
The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn. 

"Our worthy Capt. Lovewell among them there did die, 
They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, 
Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew, 
And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew." 

Our brave forefathers have exterminated all 
the Indians, and their degenerate children no 
longer dwell in garrisoned houses, nor hear 
any war-whoop in their path. It would be well, 
perchance, if many an "English Chaplin" in 
these days could exhibit as unquestionable tro- 
phies of this valor as did "good young Frye." 
We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as 
Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We 
are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one 
as convenient for ambushes. What if the 
Indians are exterminated, are not savages as 
grim prowling about the clearings to-day? — 

"And braving many dangers and hardships in the way, 
They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of May." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 145 

But they did not all " safe arrive in Dunstable 
the thirteenth," or the fifteenth, or the thir- 
tieth " day of May." Eleazer Davis and Josiah 
Jones, both of Concord, for our native town had 
seven men in this fight, Lieutenant Farwell, of 
Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye, of Andover, who 
were all wounded, were left behind, creeping 
toward the settlements. "After travelling 
several miles, Frye was left and lost," though 
a more recent poet has assigned him company 
in his last hours. — 

"A man he was of comely form, 

Polished and brave, well learned and kind; 
Old Harvard's learned halls he left 
Far in the wilds a grave to find. 

"Ah! now his blood-red arm he lifts; 
His closing lids he tries to raise; 
And speak once more before he dies, 
In supplication and in praise. 

"He prays kind Heaven to grant success, 
Brave Lovewell's men to guide and bless, 
And when they've shed their heart-blood true, 
To raise them all to happiness." . . . 

"Lieutenant Farwell took his hand, 
His arm around his neck he threw, 
And said, ' brave Chaplain I could wish, 
That Heaven had made me die for you.'" 

Farwell held out eleven days. "A tradition 
says," as we learn from the history of Concord, 
"that arriving at a pond with Lieut. Farwell, 



146 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Davis pulled off one of his moccasins, cut it in 
strings, on which he fastened a hook, caught some 
fish, fried and ate them. They refreshed him, 
but were injurious to Farwell, who died soon 
after." Davis had a ball lodged in his body, 
and his right hand shot off; but on the whole, he 
seems to have been less damaged than his com- 
panion. He came into Berwick after being out 
fourteen days. Jones also had a ball lodged in 
his body, but he likewise got into Saco after 
fourteen days, though not in the best condition 
imaginable. " He had subsisted," says an old 
journal, "on the spontaneous vegetables of the 
forest; and cranberries, which he had eaten, 
came out of wounds he had received in his body. " 
This was also the case with Davis. The last 
two reached home at length, safe if not sound, 
and lived many years in a crippled state to enjoy 
their pension. 

But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their 
adventures in the woods, — 

"For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell, 
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well," — 

how many balls lodged with them, how it fared 
with their cranberries, what Berwick or Saco 
they got into, and finally what pension or town- 
ship was granted them, there is no journal to tell. 
It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that 
just before his last march, Lovewell was warned 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 147 

to beware of the ambuscades of the enemy, but 
"he replied, 'that he did not care for them,' 
and bending down a small elm beside which he 
was standing into a bow, declared ' that he would 
treat the Indians in the same way.' This elm 
is still standing [in Nashua], a venerable and 
magnificent tree." 

Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe In- 
terval in Tyngsboro', where the river makes a 
sudden bend to the northwest, — for our re- 
flections have anticipated our progress some- 
what, — we were advancing further into the 
country and into the day, which last proved 
almost as golden as the preceding, though the 
slight bustle and activity of the Monday seemed 
to penetrate even to this scenery. Now and 
then we had to muster all our energy to get 
round a point, where the river broke rippling 
over rocks, and the maples trailed their branches 
in the stream, but there was generally a back- 
water or eddy on the side, of which we took 
advantage. The river was here about forty 
rods wide and fifteen feet deep. Occasionally 
one ran along the shore, examining the country, 
and visiting the nearest farm-houses, while the 
other followed the windings of the stream alone, 
to meet his companion at some distant point, 
and hear the report of his adventures; how the 
farmer praised the coolness of his well, and his 



148 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, or 
the children quarrelled for the only transparency 
in the window that they might get sight of the 
man at the well. For though the country seemed 
so new, and no house was observed by us, shut 
in between the high banks that sunny day, we 
did not have to travel far to find where men 
inhabited, like wild bees, and had sunk wells in 
the loose sand and loam of the Merrimack. 
There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew scrip- 
tures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin 
vaporous smoke curled up through the noon. 
All that is told of mankind, of the inhabitants 
of the Upper Nile, and the Sunderbunds, and 
Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko, was experience 
here. Every race and class of men was repre- 
sented. According to Belknap, the historian 
of New Hampshire, who wrote sixty years ago, 
here too, perchance, dwelt " new lights," and 
free thinking men even then. "The people in 
general throughout the State," it is written, 
" are professors of the Christian religion in some 
form or other. There is, however, a sort of wise 
men, who pretend to reject it; but they have not 
yet been able to substitute a better in its place. " 

The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the 
meanwhile have seen a brown hawk, or a wood- 
chuck, or a musquash, creeping under the alders. 

We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple 
or a willow, and drew forth a melon for our 




At the Horseshoe Bend 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 149 

refreshment, while we contemplated at our 
leisure the lapse of the river and of human life; 
and as that current, with its floating twigs and 
leaves, so did all things pass in review before us, 
while far away in cities and marts on this very 
stream, the old routine was proceeding still. 
There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as 
the poet says, and yet as things flow they cir- 
culate, and the ebb always balances the flow. 
All streams are but tributary to the ocean, which 
itself does not stream, and the shores are un- 
changed but in longer periods than man can 
measure. Go where we will, we discover infinite 
change in particulars only, not in generals. 
When I go into a museum, and see the mummies 
wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the 
times began to need reform as long ago as when 
they walked the earth. I come out into the 
streets, and meet men who declare that the 
time is near at hand for the redemption of the 
race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they 
live in Dunstable to-day. "Time drinketh 
up the essence of every great and noble action, 
which ought to be performed, and is delayed 
in the execution," so says Veeshnoo Sarma; 
and we perceive that the schemers return again 
and again to common sense and labor. Such 
is the evidence of history. — 

"Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the 
Suns." 



150 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

There are secret articles in our treaties with the 
gods, of more importance than all the rest, 
which the historian can never know. 

There are many skilful apprentices, but few 
master workmen. On every hand we observe 
a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, 
and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of 
many an ancient philosopher. Who does not 
see that heresies have some time prevailed, that 
reforms have already taken place? All this 
worldly wisdom might be regarded as the once 
unamiable heresy of some wise man. Some 
interests have got a footing on the earth which 
we have not made sufficient allowance for. Even 
they who first built these barns, and cleared the 
land thus, had some valor. The abrupt epochs 
and chasms are smoothed down in history as the 
inequalities of the plain are concealed by dis- 
tance. But unless we do more than simply 
learn the trade of our time, we are but 
apprentices, and not yet masters of the art 
of life. 

Now that we are casting away these melon 
seeds, how can we help feeling reproach? He 
who eats the fruit, should at least plant the seed; 
aye, if possible, a better seed than that whose 
fruit he has enjoyed. Seeds! there are seeds 
enough which need only to be stirred in with the 
soil where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen, 
to bear fruit of a divine flavor. O thou spend- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 151 

thrift! Defray thy debt to the world; eat not 
the seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but 
plant it rather, while thou devourest the pulp 
and tuber for thy subsistence; that so, perchance, 
one variety may at last be found worthy of pres- 
ervation. 

There are moments when all anxiety and 
stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure 
and repose of nature. All laborers must have 
their nooning, and at this season of the day, we 
are all, more or less, Asiatics, and give over all 
work and reform. While lying thus on our 
oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the 
day, our boat held by an osier put through the 
staple in its prow, and slicing the melons, which 
are a fruit of the east, our thoughts reverted to 
Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of 
contemplation and dwelling places of the rumi- 
nant nations. In the experience of this noon- 
tide we could find some apology even for the in- 
stinct of the opium, betel, and tobacco chewers. 
Mount Saber, according to the French traveller 
and naturalist, Botta, is celebrated for producing 
the Kat tree, of which "the soft tops of the 
twigs and tender leaves are eaten," says his 
reviewer, " and produce an agreeable soothing 
excitement, restoring from fatigue, banishing 
sleep, and disposing to the enjoyment of con- 
versation." We thought that we might lead 
a dignified oriental life along this stream as well, 



152 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and the maple and alders would be our Kat 
trees. 

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from 
the restless class of Reformers. What if these 
grievances exist? So do you and I. Think 
you that sitting hens are troubled with ennui 
these long summer days, sitting on and on in 
the crevice of a hay-loft, without active em- 
ployment? By the faint cackling in distant 
barns, I judge that dame Nature is interested to 
know how many eggs her hens lay. The Uni- 
versal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the 
stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the 
draining of peat meadows. Away in Scythia, 
away in India, it makes butter and cheese. 
Suppose that all farms are run out, and we youths 
must buy old land and bring it to, still every- 
where the relentless opponents of reform bear 
a strange resemblance to ourselves; or perchance, 
they are a few old maids and bachelors, who sit 
round the kitchen hearth, and listen to the sing- 
ing of the kettle. "The oracles often give 
victory to our choice, and not to the order alone 
of the mundane periods. As, for instance, when 
they say, that our voluntary sorrows germinate 
in us as the growth of the particular life we lead." 
The reform which you talk about can be under- 
taken any morning before unbarring our doors. 
We need not call any convention. When two 
neighbors begin to eat corn bread, who before 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 153 

ate wheat, then the gods smile from ear to ear, 
for it is very pleasant to them. Why do you 
not try it? Don't let me hinder you. 

There are theoretical reformers at all times, 
and all the world over, living on anticipation. 
Wolff, travelling in the deserts of Bokhara, says: 
* 'Another party of derveeshes came to me and 
observed, 'The time will come when there shall 
be no difference between rich and poor, between 
high and low, when property will be in common, 
even wives and children.' ' But forever I 
ask of such, What then? The derveeshes in 
the deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in 
Marlboro ' Chapel sing the same song. " There 's 
a good time coming, boys," but, asked one of 
the audience in good faith, " Can you fix the 
date? " Said I, "Will you help it along?" 

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of 
nature and society hint at infinite periods in 
the progress of mankind. The States have 
leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at some 
newspaper joke, and New England shakes at 
the double-entendres of Australian circles, while 
the poor reformer cannot get a hearing. 

Men do not fail commonly for want of knowl- 
edge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom 
the preference. W 7 hat we need to know in 
any case is very simple. It is but too easy to 
establish another durable and harmonious rou- 
tine. Immediately all parts of nature consent 



154 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

to it. Only make something to take the place 
of something, and men will behave as if it were 
the very thing they wanted. They must be- 
have, at any rate, and will work up any material. 
There is always a present and extant life, be it 
better or worse, which all combine to uphold. 
We should be slow to mend, my friends, as slow 
to require mending, "Not hurling, according 
to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety." 
The language of excitement is at best pictur- 
esque merely. You must be calm before you 
can utter oracles. What was the excitement of 
the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wis- 
dom of Socrates? — or whoever it was that was 
wise. — Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. 

"Men find that action is another thing 

Than what they in discoursing papers read; 
The world's affairs require in managing 

More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed." 

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may 
discover the causes of all past change in the 
present invariable order of society. The great- 
est appreciable physical revolutions are the work 
of the light-footed air, the stealthy -paced water, 
and the subterranean fire. Aristotle said, "As 
time never fails, and the universe is eternal, 
neither the Tanais nor the Nile, can have flowed 
forever." We are independent of the change 
we detect. The longer the lever the less per- 
ceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 155 

which is the most vital. The hero then will 
know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All 
good abides with him who waiteth wisely; we 
shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining 
here than by hurrying over the hills of the west. 
Be assured that every man's success is in pro- 
portion to his average ability. The meadow 
flowers spring and bloom where the waters 
annually deposit their slime, not where they 
reach in some freshet only. A man is not his 
hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We 
know not yet what we have done, still less what 
we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts 
of our day 's work will shine than we had thought 
at noon, and we shall discover the real purport 
of our toil. As when the farmer has reached 
the end of the furrow and looks back, he can 
best tell where the pressed earth shines most. 

To one who habitually endeavors to contem- 
plate the true state of things, the political state 
can hardly be said to have any existence whatever. 
It is unreal, incredible and insignificant to him, 
and for him to endeavor to extract the truth 
from such lean material is like making sugar 
from linen rags, when sugar cane may be had. 
Generally speaking, the political news, whether 
domestic or foreign, might be written to-day for 
the next ten years, with sufficient accuracy. 
Most revolutions in society have not power to 
interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our 



156 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying 
out in the country, and I might attend. Most 
events recorded in history are more remarkable 
than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, 
by which all are attracted, but whose effects no 
one takes the trouble to calculate. But will the 
government never be so well administered, in- 
quired one, that we private men shall hear noth- 
ing about it? "The king answered: At all 
events, I require a prudent and able man, who is 
capable of managing the state affairs of my 
kingdom. The ex-minister said, The criterion, 
O Sire! of a wise and competent man, is, that he 
will not meddle with such like matters." Alas, 
that the ex-minister should have been so nearly 
right. 

In my short experience of human life, the out- 
ward obstacles, if there were any such, have not 
been living men, but the institutions of the dead. 
It is grateful to make one's way through this 
latest generation as through dewy grass. Men 
are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspi- 
cious. — 

"And round about good-morrows fly, 
As if day taught humanity." 

Not being Reve of this Shire, 

"The early pilgrim blithe he hailed, 

That o'er the hills did stray, 

And many an early husbandman, 

That he met on his way;" — 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 157 

thieves and robbers all nevertheless. I have not 
so surely foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway 
would come to disturb the honest and simple 
commonwealth, as that some monster institution 
would at length embrace and crush its free mem- 
bers in its scaly folds; for it is not to be forgotten, 
that while the law holds fast the thief and mur- 
derer, it lets itself go loose. When I have not 
paid the tax which the State d manded for that 
protection which I did not want, itself has robbed 
me; when I have asserted the liberty it presumed 
to declare, itself has imprisoned me. Poor 
creature! if it knows no better I will not blame 
it. If it cannot live but by these means, I can. 
I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with 
Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in 
conquering Mexico. I am a little better than 
herself in these respects. — As for Massachusetts, 
that huge she Briareus, Argus, and Colchian 
Dragon conjoined, set to watch the Heifer of 
the Constitution and the Golden Fleece, we 
would not warrant our respect for her, like some 
compositions, to preserve its qualities through 
all weathers. — Thus it has happened, that not 
the Arch Fiend himself has been in my way, but 
these toils which tradition says were originally 
spun to obstruct him. They are cobwebs and 
trifling obstacles in an earnest man's path, it is 
true, and at length one even becomes attached 
to his unswept and undusted garret. I love man 



158 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

— kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead 
unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as 
the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. 
They rule this world, and the living are but 
their executors. Such foundations too have our 
lectures and our sermons commonly. They 
are all Dudleian; and piety derives its origin 
still from that exploit of pins /Eneas, who bore 
his father, Anchises, on his shoulders from the 
ruins of Troy. Or rather, like some Indian 
tribes, we bear about with us the mouldering 
relics of our ancestors on our shoulders. If, 
for instance, a man asserts the value of individual 
liberty over the merely political commonweal, 
his neighbor still tolerates him, that is he who is 
living near him, sometimes even sustains him, 
but never the State. Its officer, as a living man, 
may have human virtues and a thought in his 
brain, but as the tool of an institution, a jailor 
or constable it may be, he is not a whit superior 
to his prison key or his staff. Herein is the 
tragedy; that men doing outrage to their proper 
natures, even those called wise and good, lend 
themselves to perform the office of inferior and 
brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery in; 
and what else may not come in by this opening? 
But certainly there are modes by which a 
man may put bread into his mouth which 
will not prejudice him as a companion and 
neighbor. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 159 

"Now turn again, turn again, said the pinder, 
For a wrong way you have gone, 
For you have forsaken the king's highway, 
And made a path over the corn." 

Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called 
for, because society is not animated, or instinct 
enough with life, but in the condition of some 
snakes which I have seen in early spring, with 
alternate portions of their bodies torpid and 
flexible, so that they could wriggle neither way. 
All men are partially buried in the grave of cus- 
tom, and of some we see only the crown of the 
head above ground. Better are the physically 
dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is 
no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life 
should be constantly as fresh as this river. It 
should be the same channel, but a new water 
every instant. — 

"Virtues as rivers pass, 



But still remains that virtuous man there was." 

Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no 
cascades, but marshes, and alligators, and mi- 
asma instead. We read that when in the expedi- 
tion of Alexander, Onesicritus was sent forward 
to meet certain of the Indian sect of Gymnoso- 
phists, and he had told them of those new phi- 
losophers of the west, Pythagoras, Socrates, and 
Diogenes, and their doctrines, one of them named 
Dandamis answered, that "They appeared to 



160 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

him to have been men of genius, but to have 
lived with too passive a regard for the laws." 
The philosophers of the west are liable to this 
rebuke still. "They say that Lieou-hia-hoei, 
and Chao-lien did not sustain to the end their 
resolutions, and that they dishonored their char- 
acter. Their language was in harmony with 
reason and justice; while their acts were in har- 
mony with the sentiments of men." 

Chateaubriand said, "There are two things 
which grow stronger in the breast of man, in 
proportion as he advances in years; the love of 
country and religion. Let them be never so 
much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later 
present themselves to us arrayed in all their 
charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts, 
an attachment justly due to their beauty." It 
may be so. But even this infirmity of noble 
minds marks the gradual decay of youthful 
hope and faith. It is the allowed infidelity of 
age. There is a saying of the Yoloffs, "He who 
was born first has the greatest number of old 
clothes," consequently M. Chateaubriand has 
more old clothes than I have. It is compara- 
tively a faint and reflected beauty that is ad- 
mired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It 
is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, 
and think that they have measured the strength 
of man. They will not boast; they will be frank 
and humble. Well, let them have the few poor 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 161 

comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very 
human virtue. They look back on life, and so 
see not into the future. The prospect of the 
young is forward and unbounded, mingling the 
future with the present. In the declining day 
the thoughts make haste to rest in darkness, and 
hardly look forward to the ensuing morning. 
The thoughts of the old prepare for night and 
slumber. The same hopes and prospects are 
not for him who stands upon the rosy mountain- 
tops of life, and him who expects the setting of 
his earthly day. 

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the 
name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or 
for a hindrance. However flattering order and 
experience may look, it is but the repose of a 
lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, 
though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on 
this earth and in this life, as we may, without 
signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we 
cannot stay here where He has put us, k on his 
own conditions. Does not his law reach as far 
as his light? The expedients of the nations 
clash with one another, only the absolutely 
right is expedient for all. 

There are some passages in the Antigone of 
Sophocles, well known to scholars, of which I am 
reminded in this connection. Antigone has 
resolved to sprinkle sand on the dead body of 
her brother, Polynices, notwithstanding the 



162 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

edict of King Creon condemning to death that 
one who should perform this service, which the 
Greeks deemed so important, for the enemy of 
his country; but Ismene, who is of a less resolute 
and noble spirit, declines taking part with her 
sister in this work, and says, — 

" I, therefore, asking those under the earth to 
consider me, that I am compelled to do thus, will 
obey those who are placed in office; for to do ex- 
treme things is not wise." 

ANTIGONE. 

" I would not ask you, nor would you, if you 
still wished, do it joyfully with me. Be such as 
seems good to you. But I will bury him. It 
is glorious for me doing this to die. I beloved 
will lie with him beloved, having, like a criminal, 
done what is holy ; since the time is longer which 
it is necessary for me to please those below, than 
those here, for there I shall always lie. But if 
it seems good to you, hold in dishonor things 
which are honored by the gods." 

ISMENE. 

" I indeed do not hold them in dishonor; but 
to act in opposition to the citizens I am by 
nature unable." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 163 

Antigone being at length brought before King 
Creon, he asks, 

"Did you then dare to transgress these laws?" 

ANTIGONE. 

"For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these to 
me, nor Justice who dwells with the gods below; 
it was not they who established these laws among 
men. Nor did I think that your proclamations 
were so strong, as, being a mortal, to be able to 
transcend the unwritten and immovable, to be 
able to transcend the unwritten and immovable 
laws of the gods. For not something now and 
yesterday, but forever these live, and no one 
knows from what time they appeared. I was 
not about to pay the penalty of violating these 
to the gods, fearing the presumption of any man. 
For I well know that I should die, and why not? 
even if you had not proclaimed it." 

This was concerning the burial of a dead body. 

The wisest conservatism is that of the Hindoos. 
"Immemorial custom is transcendent law," 
says Menu. That is, it was the custom of the 
gods before men used it. The fault of our New 
England custom is that it is memorial. What 
is morality but immemorial custom? Con- 
science is the chief of conservatives. " Perform 
the settled functions," says Kreeshna in the 



164 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Bhagvat-Geeta, "action is preferable to inac- 
tion. The journey of thy mortal frame may 
not succeed from inaction." — "A man's own 
calling, with all its faults, ought not to be for- 
saken. Every undertaking is involved in its 
faults as the fire in its smoke." — "The man 
who is acquainted with the whole, should not 
drive those from their works who are slow of 
comprehension, and less experienced than him- 
self." — " Wherefore, O Arjoon, resolve to fight," 
— is the advice of the God to the irresolute 
soldier who fears to slay his best friends. It is 
a sublime conservatism; as wide as the world, 
and as unwearied as time; preserving the uni- 
verse with Asiatic anxiety, in that state in which 
it appeared to their minds. These philosophers 
dwell on the inevitability and unchangeable- 
ness of laws, on the power of temperament and 
constitution, the three goon or qualities, and 
the circumstances of birth and affinity. The 
end is an immense consolation; eternal absorp- 
tion in Brahma. Their speculations never ven- 
ture beyond their own table lands, though they 
are high and vast as they. Buoyancy, freedom, 
flexibility, variety, possibility, which also are 
qualities of the Unnamed, they deal not with. 
The undeserved reward is to be earned by an 
everlasting moral drudgery; the incalculable 
promise of the morrow is, as it were, weighed. 
And who will say that their conservatism has 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 165 

not been effectual. "Assuredly," says a French 
translator, speaking of the antiquity and dura- 
bility of the Chinese and Indian nations, and of 
the wisdom of their legislators, "there are there 
some vestiges of the eternal laws which govern 
the world." 

Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, 
practical, and, in a large sense, radical. So 
many years and ages of the gods those eastern 
sages sat contemplating Brahm, uttering in 
silence the mystic "Om," being absorbed into 
the essence of the Supreme Being, never going 
out of themselves, but subsiding further and 
deeper within; so infinitely wise, yet infinitely 
stagnant; until, at last, in that same Asia, but 
in the western part of it, appeared a youth, 
wholly unfo retold by them, — not being absorbed 
into Brahm, but bringing Brahm down to earth 
and to mankind; in whom Brahm had awaked 
from his long sleep, and exerted himself, and the 
day began, — a new avatar. The Brahman had 
never thought to be a brother of mankind as 
well as a child of God. Christ is the prince of 
Reformers and Radicals. Many expressions in 
the New Testament come naturally to the lips 
of all protestants, and it furnishes the most 
pregnant and practical text. There is no harm- 
less dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but 
everywhere a substratum of good sense. It 
never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry 



166 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light 
of pure beauty, but moral truth is its object. 
All mortals are convicted by its conscience. 

The New Testament is remarkable for its 
pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, 
for its pure intellectuality. The reader is no- 
where raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, 
or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat- 
Geeta. Warren Hastings, in his sensible letter 
recommending the translation of this book to 
the Chairman of the East India Company, 
declares the original to be "of a sublimity of 
conception, reasoning, and diction, almost un- 
equalled," and that the writings of the Indian 
philosophers " will survive when the British 
dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, 
and when the sources which it once yielded to 
wealth and power are lost to remembrance." 
It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most 
sacred scriptures that have come down to us. 
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur 
of their topics, even more than by the manner in 
which they are treated. The oriental philosophy 
approaches, easily, loftier themes than the mod- 
ern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes 
prattle about them. It only assigns their due 
rank respectively to Action and Contempla- 
tion, or rather does full justice to the latter. 
Western philosophers have not conceived of the 
significance of Contemplation in their sense. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 167 

Speaking of the spiritual discipline to which the 
Brahmans subjected themselves, and the won- 
derful power of abstraction to which they at- 
tained, instances of which had come under his 
notice, Hastings says: — 

"To those who have never been accustomed 
to the separation of the mind from the notices 
of the senses, it may not be easy to conceive by 
what means such a power is to be attained; 
since even the most studious men of our hemi- 
sphere will find it difficult so to restrain their 
attention, but that it will wander to some object 
of present sense or recollection; and even the 
buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power 
to disturb it. But if we are told that there have 
been men who were successively, for ages past, 
in the daily habit of abstracted contemplation, 
begun in the earliest period of youth, and con- 
tinued in many to the maturity of age, each add- 
ing some portion of knowledge to the store 
accumulated by his predecessors; it is not as- 
suming too much to conclude, that as the mind 
ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise, 
so in such an exercise it may in each have ac- 
quired the faculty to which they aspired, and 
that their collective studies may have led them 
to the discovery of new tracks and combinations 
of sentiment, totally different from the doc- 
trines with which the learned of other nations 



168 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

are acquainted; doctrines which, however spec- 
ulative and subtle, still, as they possess the 
advantage of being derived from a source so free 
from every adventitious mixture, may be equally 
founded in truth with the most simple of our 
own." 

"The forsaking of works" was taught by 
Kreeshna to the most ancient of men, and handed 
down from one to another, " until at length, in 
the course of time the mighty art was lost. 

" In wisdom is to be found every work with- 
out exception," says Kreeshna. 

"Although thou wert the greatest of all offen- 
ders, thou shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin 
with the bark of wisdom." 

"There is not anything in this world to be 
compared with wisdom for purity." 

"The action stands at a distance inferior to 
the application of wisdom." 

The wisdom of a Moonee " is confirmed, when, 
like the tortoise, he can draw in all his members, 
and restrain them from their wonted purposes." 

" Children only, and not the learned, speak 
of the speculative and the practical doctrines as 
two. They are but one. For both obtain the 
self-same end, and the place which is gained by 
the followers of the one, is gained by the followers 
of the other." 

"The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, 
from the non-commencement of that which he 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 169 

hath to do; nor doth he obtain happiness from 
a total inactivity. No one ever resteth a mo- 
ment inactive. Every man is involuntarily urged 
to act by those principles which are inherent in 
his nature. The man who restraineth his active 
faculties, and sitteth down with his mind at- 
tentive to the objects of his senses, is called one 
of an astrayed soul, and the practiser of deceit. 
So the man is praised, who, having subdued all 
his passions, performeth with his active facul- 
ties all the functions of life, unconcerned about 
the event." 

" Let the motive be in the deed and not in the 
event. Be not one whose motive for action is 
the hope of regard. Let not thy life be spent 
in inaction." 

" For the man who doeth that which he hath 
to do, without affection, obtaineth the Supreme." 

"He who may behold, as it were inaction in 
action, and action in inaction, is wise amongst 
mankind. He is a perfect performer of all duty." 

" Wise men call him a Pandeet, whose every 
undertaking is free from the idea of desire, arid 
whose actions are consumed by the fire of wis- 
dom. He abandoneth the desire of a reward 
of his actions; he is always contented and in- 
dependent; and although he may be engaged in 
a work, he, as it were, doeth nothing." 

"He is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who 
performeth that which he hath to do independent 



170 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of the fruit thereof; not he who liveth without the 
sacrificial fire and without action." 

"He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which 
is left of his offerings, obtaineth the eternal 
spirit of Brahm, the Supreme." 

What after all does the practicalness of life 
amount to? The things immediate to be done 
are very trivial. I could postpone them all to 
hear this locust sing. The most glorious fact 
in our experience is not anything that we have 
done or may hope to do, but a transient thought, 
or vision, or dream, which we have had. I 
would give all the wealth of the world, and all 
the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. 
But how can I communicate with the gods who 
am a pencil-maker on the earth, and not be 
insane? 

"I am the same to all mankind," says 
Kreeshna; "there is not one who is worthy of 
my love or hatred." 

This teaching is not practical in the sense in 
which the New Testament is. It is not always 
sound sense in practice. The Brahman never 
proposes courageously to assault evil, but pa- 
tiently to starve it out. His active faculties are 
paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassable 
limits, of destiny, and the tyranny of time. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 171 

Kreeshna's argument, it must be allowed, is 
defective. No sufficient reason is given why 
Arjoon should fight. Arjoon may be convinced, 
but the reader is not, for his judgment is not 
"formed upon speculative doctrines of the San- 
khya Sastra." " Seek an asylum in wisdom 
alone," — but what is wisdom to a western 
mind? He speaks of duty, but the duty of 
which he speaks, is it not an arbitrary one? 
When was it established? The Brahman's 
virtue consists not in doing right, but arbitrary 
things. What is that which a man "hath to 
do "? What is " action "? What are the " set- 
tled functions"? What is "a man's own 
religion," which is so much better than 
another's? What is " a man's own particular 
calling"? What are the duties which are ap- 
pointed by one's birth? It is in fact a de- 
fence of the institution of caste, of what is 
called the "natural duty" of the Kshetree, or 
soldier, "to attach himself to the discipline," 
"not to flee from the field," and the like. But 
they who are unconcerned about the conse- 
quences of their actions, are not therefore un- 
concerned about their actions. — Yet we know 
not where we should look for a loftier specula- 
tive faith. 

Behold the difference between the oriental and 
the occidental. The former has nothing to do 
in this world; the latter is full of activity. The 



172 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

one look in the sun till his eyes are put out; 
the other follows him prone in his westward 
course. There is such a thing as caste, even in 
the West; but it is comparatively faint. It is 
conservatism here. It says forsake not your 
calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, 
rend no bonds. The State is thy parent. Its 
virtue or manhood is wholly filial. There is a 
struggle between the oriental and occidental in 
every nation; some who would be forever con- 
templating the sun, and some who are hastening 
toward the sunset. The former class says to 
the latter, When you have reached the sunset, 
you will be no nearer to the sun. To which the 
latter replies, But we so prolong the day. The 
former "walketh but in that night, when all 
things go to rest, the night of time. The con- 
templative Moonee sleepeth but in the day of 
time when all things wake." 

To conclude these extracts, I can say, in the 
words of Sanjay, "As, O mighty Prince! I recol- 
lect again and again this holy and wonderful 
dialogue of Kreeshna and Arjoon, I continue 
more and more to rejoice; and as I recall to my 
memory the more than miraculous form of 
Haree, my astonishment is great, and I mar- 
vel and rejoice again and again! Wherever 
Kreeshna the God of devotion may be, wher- 
ever Arjoon the mighty bowman may be, 
there too, without doubt, are fortune, riches, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 173 

victory, and good conduct. This is my firm 
belief." 

I would say to the readers of Scriptures, if 
they wish for a good book to read, read the 
Bhagvat-Geeta, an episode to the Mahabharat, 
said to have been written by Kreeshna Dwy- 
payen Veias, — known to have been written by 

, more than four thousand years ago, — it 

matters not whether three or four, or when, — 
translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to 
be read with reverence even by Yankees, as a 
part of the sacred writings of a devout people; 
and the intelligent Hebrew will rejoice to find 
in it a moral grandeur and sublimity akin to 
those of his own Scriptures. 

To an American reader, who, by the advantage 
of his position, can see over that strip of Atlantic 
coast to Asia and the Pacific, who, as it were, sees 
the shore slope upward over the Alps to the 
Himmaleh mountains, the comparatively recent 
literature of Europe often appears partial and 
clannish, and, notwithstanding the limited range 
of his own sympathies and studies, the European 
writer who presumes that he is speaking for the 
world, is perceived by him to speak only for 
that corner of it which he inhabits. One of the 
rarest of England's scholars and critics, in his 
classification of the worthies of the world, be- 
trays the narrowness of his European culture 
and the exclusiveness of his reading. None 



174 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of her children has done justice to the poets 
and philosophers of Persia or of India. They 
have been better known to her merchant schol- 
ars than to her poets and thinkers by profession. 
You may look in vain through English poetry 
for a single memorable verse inspired by these 
themes. Nor is Germany to be excepted, though 
her philological industry is indirectly serving the 
cause of philosophy and poetry. Even Goethe, 
one would say, wanted that universality of gen- 
ius which could have appreciated the philoso- 
phy of India, if he had more nearly approached 
it. His genius was more practical, dwelling 
much more in the regions of the understanding, 
and less native to contemplation, than the genius 
of those sages. It is remarkable that Homer 
and a few Hebrews are the most oriental names 
which modern Europe, whose literature has 
taken its rise since the decline of the Persian, has 
admitted into her list of Worthies, and perhaps 
the worthiest of mankind, and the fathers of 
modern thinking, — for the contemplations of 
those Indian sages have influenced the intellec- 
tual development of mankind, — whose works 
even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, 
for the most part, not recognized as ever having 
existed. If the lions had been the painters it 
would have been otherwise. In every one's 
youthful dreams philosophy is still vaguely but 
inseparably, and with singular truth, associated 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 175 

with the East, nor do after years discover its 
local habitation in the Western world. In 
comparison with the philosophers of the East 
we may say that modern Europe has yet given 
birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal 
philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our 
Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green 
and practical merely. Some of these sublime 
sentences, as the Chaldsean oracles of Zoroaster, 
for instance, still surviving after a thousand 
revolutions and translations, make us doubt 
if the poetic form and dress are not transitory, 
and not essential to the most effective and en- 
during expression of thought. Ex oriente lux 
may still be the motto of scholars, for the West- 
ern world has not yet derived from the East 
all the light which it is destined to receive 
thence. 

It would be worthy of the age to print together 
the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of 
the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, 
the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the 
Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is 
still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the 
hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this 
sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison 
might help to liberalize the faith of men. This 
is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved 
to crown the labors of the printing press. This 
would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which 



176 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts 
of the earth. 

While engaged in these reflections, thinking 
ourselves the only navigators of these waters, 
suddenly a canal boat, with its sail set, glided 
round a point before us, like some huge river 
beast, and changed the scene in an instant; 
and then another and another glided into sight, 
and we found ourselves in the current of com- 
merce once more. So we threw our rinds into 
the water for the fishes to nibble, and added our 
breath to the life of living men. Little did we 
think in the distant garden in which we had 
planted the seed and reared this fruit, where it 
would be eaten. Our melons lay at home on 
the sandy bottom of the Merrimack, and our 
potatoes in the sun and water at the bottom of 
the boat looked like a fruit of the country. 
Soon, however, we were delivered from this 
fleet of junks, and possessed the river in soli- 
tude, rowing steadily upward through the noon, 
between the territories of Nashua on the one 
hand, and Hudson, once Nottingham, on the 
other; from time to time scaring up a king-fisher 
or a summer duck, the former flying rather by 
vigorous impulses, than by steady and patient 
steering with that short rudder of his, sounding 
his rattle along the fluvial street. 

Ere long another scow hove in sight, creeping 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 177 

down the river, and hailing it, we attached our- 
selves to its side, and floated back in company, 
chatting with the boatmen, and obtaining a 
draught of cooler water from their jug. They 
appeared to be green hands from far among the 
hills, who had taken this means to get to the 
seaboard, and see the world; and would possibly 
visit the Falkland Isles, and the China seas, 
before they again saw the waters of the Merri- 
mack, or perchance, not return this way forever. 
They had already embarked the private inter- 
ests of the landsman in the larger venture of 
the race, and were ready to mess with mankind, 
reserving only the till of a chest to themselves. 
But they too were soon lost behind a point, and 
we went croaking on our way alone. What 
grievances has its root among the New Hamp- 
shire hills? we asked; what is wanting to human 
life here, that these men should make such haste 
to the antipodes? We prayed that their bright 
anticipations might not be rudely disappointed. 

Though all the fates should prove unkind, 
Leave not your native land behind. 
The ship, becalmed, at length stands still; 
The steed must rest beneath the hill; 
But swiftly still our fortunes pace, 
To find us out in every place. 

The vessel, though her masts be firm, 
Beneath her copper bears a worm; 
Around the cape, across the line, 
Till fields of ice her course confine; 



178 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

It matters not how smooth the breeze, 

How shallow or how deep the seas, 

Whether she bears Manilla twine, 

Or in her hold Madeira wine, 

Or China teas, or Spanish hides, 

In port or quarantine she rides; 

Far from New England's blustering shore, 

New England's worm her hulk shall bore, 

And sink her in the Indian seas, 

Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas. 

We passed a small desert here on the east 
bank, between Tyngsboro' and Hudson, which 
was interesting and even refreshing to our eyes 
in the midst of the almost universal greenness. 
This sand was indeed somewhat impressive and 
beautiful to us. A very old inhabitant, who 
was at work in a field on the Nashua side, told 
us that he remembered when corn and grain 
grew there, and it was a cultivated field. But 
at length the fishermen, for this was a fishing 
place, pulled up the bushes on the shore, for 
greater convenience in hauling their seines, and 
when the bank was thus broken, the wind began 
to blow up the sand from the shore, until at 
length it had covered about fifteen acres several 
feet deep. We saw near the river, where the 
sand was blown off down to some ancient sur- 
face, the foundation of an Indian wigwam 
exposed, a perfect circle of burnt stones four or 
five feet in diameter, mingled with fine charcoal 
and the bones of small animals, which had been 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 179 

preserved in the sand. The surrounding sand 
was sprinkled with other burnt stones on which 
their fires had been built, as well as with flakes 
of arrow-head stone, and we found one perfect 
arrow-head. In one place we noticed where an 
Indian had sat to manufacture arrow-heads out 
of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with a 
quart of small glass-like ships about as big as a 
fourpence, which he had broken off in his work. 
Here, then, the Indians must have fished before 
the whites arrived. There was another similar 
sandy tract about half a mile above this. 

Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the 
prow aside to bathe, and recline ourselves under 
some buttonwoods by a ledge of rocks, in a 
retired pasture, sloping to the water's edge, and 
skirted with pines and hazels, in the town of 
Hudson. Still had India, and that old noontide 
philosophy, the better part of our thoughts. 

It is always singular, but encouraging, to 
meet with common sense in very old books, as 
the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful 
wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, 
and oversees itself. It asserts their health and 
independence of the experience of later times. 
This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, 
that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself. 
The story and fabulous portion of this book 
winds loosely from sentence to sentence as so 



180 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

many oases in a desert, and is as indistinct as a 
camel's track between Mourzouk and Darfour. 
It is a comment on the flow and freshet of mod- 
ern books. The reader leaps from sentence 
to sentence, as from one stepping-stone to another, 
while the stream of the story rushes past un- 
regarded. The Bhagvat-Geeta is less senten- 
tious and poetic, perhaps, but still more wonder- 
fully sustained and developed. Its sanity and 
sublimity have impressed the minds even of 
soldiers and merchants. It is the characteristic 
of great poems that they will yield of their 
sense in due proportion to the hasty and the 
deliberate reader. To the practical they will 
be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as 
either the traveller may wet his lips, or an army 
may fill its water casks at a full stream. 

One of the most attractive of those ancient 
books that I have met with is the Laws of Menu. 
According to Sir William Jones, " Vyasa, the son 
of Parasara, has decided that the Veda, with its 
Angas, or the six compositions deduced from it, 
the revealed system of medicine, the Puranas, 
or sacred histories, and the code of Menu, were 
four works of supreme authority, which ought 
never to be shaken by arguments merely human." 
The last is believed by the Hindoos "to have 
been promulgated in the beginning of time, by 
Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first 
of created beings "; and Brahma is said to have 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 181 

" taught his laws to Menu in a hundred thou- 
sand verses, which Menu explained to the prim- 
itive world in the very words of the book now 
translated." Others affirm that they have 
undergone successive abridgments for the con- 
venience of mortals, " while the gods of the 
lower haven, and the band of celestial musicians, 
are engaged in studying the primary code." — 
"A number of glosses or comments on Menu 
were composed by the Munis, or old philosophers, 
whose treatises, together with that before us, 
constitute the Dherma Sastra, in a collective 
sense, or Body of Law." Culluca Bhatta was 
one of the more modern of these. 

Every sacred book, successively, seems to 
have been accepted in the faith that it was to be 
the final resting-place of the sojourning soul; but 
after all, it is but a caravansary which supplies 
refreshment to the traveller, and directs him 
farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. 
Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at 
the framing of the world, but we are freemen of 
the universe, and not sentenced to any caste. 

I know of no book which has come down to us 
with grander pretensions than this, and it is so 
impersonal and sincere that it is never offensive 
nor ridiculous. Compare the modes in which 
modern literature is advertised with the pros- 
pectus of this book, and think what a reading 
public it addresses, what criticism it expects. 



182 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

It seems to have been uttered from some eastern 
summit, with a sober morning prescience in the 
dawn of time, and you cannot read a sentence 
without being elevated as upon the table-land of 
the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds 
of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and is 
as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh moun- 
tains. Its tone is of such unrelaxed fibre, that 
even at this late day, unworn by time, it wears 
the English and the Sanscrit dress indifferently, 
and its fixed sentences keep up their distant 
fires still like the stars, by whose dissipated rays 
this lower world is illumined. The whole book 
by noble gestures and inclinations seems to 
render many words unnecessary. English sense 
has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired. 
The sentences open, as we read them, unex- 
pensively, and, at first, almost unmeaningly, as 
the petals of a flower, yet they sometimes startle 
us with that rare kind of wisdom which could 
only have been learned from the most trivial 
experience; but it comes to us as refined as the 
porcelain earth which subsides to the bottom of 
the ocean. They are clean and dry as fossil 
truths, which have been exposed to the elements 
for thousands of years, so impersonally and 
scientifically true that they are the ornament of 
the parlor and the cabinet. Any moral philos- 
ophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu ad- 
dresses our privacy more than most. It is a 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 183 

more private and familiar, and, at the same 
time, a more public and universal word than is 
spoken in parlor or pulpit now-a-days. As 
our domestic fowls are said to have their original 
in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic 
thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts 
of her philosophers. We seem to be dabbling 
in the very elements of our present conventional 
and actual life; as if it were the primeval con- 
venticle where how to eat and to drink and to 
sleep, and maintain life with adequate dignity 
and sincerity, were the questions to be decided. 
It is later and more intimate even than the 
advice of our nearest friends. And yet it is 
true for the widest horizon, and read out of 
doors has relation to the dim mountain line, and 
is native and aboriginal there. Most books 
belong to the house and street only, and in the 
fields their leaves feel very thin. They are bare 
and obvious, and have no halo nor haze about 
them. Nature lies far and fair behind them all. 
But this, as it proceeds from, so does it address 
what is deepest and most abiding in man. It 
belongs to the noontide of the day, the mid- 
summer of the year, and after the snows have 
melted, and the waters evaporated in the spring, 
still its truth speaks freshly to our experience. 
It helps the sun to shine, and his rays fall on 
its page to illustrate it. It spends the mornings 
and the evenings, and makes such an impres- 



184 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

sion on us over night as to awaken us before 
dawn, and its influence lingers around us like 
a fragrance late into the day. It conveys a 
new gloss to the meadows and the depths of the 
wood. Its spirit, like a more subtile ether, 
sweeps along with the prevailing winds of a 
country, and the very locusts and crickets of a 
summer day are but later or earlier glosses on 
the Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos, a continua- 
tion of the sacred code. As we have said, there 
is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, 
and the farthest west is but the farthest east. 
This fair modern world is only a reprint of the 
Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried 
by a New England eye, or the mere practical 
wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles 
of a race already in its dotage, but held up to 
the sky, which is the only impartial and incor- 
ruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its 
depth and serenity, and I am assured that they 
will have a place and significance as long as 
there is a sky to test them by. 

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can 
understand. There must be a kind of life and 
palpitation to it, and under its words a kind 
of blood must circulate forever. It is wonder- 
ful that this sound should have come down to 
us from so far, when the voice of man can be 
heard so little way, and we are not now within 
ear-shot of any contemporary. The wood- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 185 

cutters have here felled an ancient pine forest, 
and brought to light to these distant hills a fair 
lake in the south-west; and now in an instant it 
is distinctly shown to these woods as if its image 
had travelled hither from eternity. Perhaps 
these old stumps upon the knoll remember when 
anciently this lake gleamed in the horizon. 
One wonders if the bare earth itself did not 
experience emotion at beholding again so fair 
a prospect. That fair water lies there in the 
sun thus revealed, so much the prouder and 
fairer because its beauty needed not to be 
seen. It seems yet lonely, sufficient to itself, 
and superior to observation. — So are these 
old sentences like serene lakes in the south- 
west, at length revealed to us, which have so 
long been reflecting our own sky in their bosom. 
The great plain of India lies as in a cup be- 
tween the Himmaleh and the ocean on the north 
and south, and the Brahmapootra and Indus, 
on the east and west, wherein the primeval race 
was received. We will not dispute the story. 
We are pleased to read in the natural history of 
the country, of the " pine, larch, spruce, and 
silver fir," which cover the southern face of 
the Himmaleh range; of the " gooseberry, rasp- 
berry, strawberry," which from an imminent 
temperate zone overlook the torrid plains. So 
did this active modern life have even then a 
foothold and lurking place in the midst of the 



186 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

stateliness and contemplativeness of those eas- 
tern plains. In another era the " lily-of -the- 
valley, cowslip, dandelion," were to work their 
way down into the plain, and bloom in a level 
zone of their own reaching round the earth. 
Already has the era of the temperate zone ar- 
rived, the era of the pine and the oak, for the 
palm and the banian do not supply the wants 
of this age. The lichens on the summits of 
the rocks will perchance find their level ere long. 
As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are 
not so much concerned to know what doctrines 
they held, as that they were held by any. We 
can tolerate all philosophies, Atomists, Pneu- 
matologists, Atheists, Theists, — Plato, Aristotle, 
Leucippus, Democritus, Pythagorus, Zoroaster, 
and Confucius. It is the attitude of these men, 
more than any communication which they make, 
that attracts us. Between these and their com- 
mentators, it is true, there is an endless dispute. 
But if it comes to this that you compare notes, 
then you are all wrong. As it is, each takes us 
up into the serene heavens, whither the small- 
est bubble rises as surely as the largest, and 
paints earth and sky for us. Any sincere thought 
is irresistible. The very austerity of the Brah- 
mans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a 
more refined and nobler luxury. Wants so 
easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a more 
refined pleasure. Their conception of creation 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 187 

is peaceful as a dream. "When that power 
awakes, then has this world its full expansion; 
but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, 
then the whole system fades away." In the 
very indistinctness of their theogony a sublime 
truth is implied. It hardly allows the reader to 
rest in any supreme first cause, but directly it 
hints at a supremer still which created the last, 
and the Creator is still behind increate. 

Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this 
Scripture; "From fire, from air, and from the 
sun," it was "milked out." One might as 
well investigate the chronology of light and heat. 
Let the sun shine. Menu understood this 
matter best, when he said, " Those best know 
the divisions of days and nights who understand 
that the day of Brahma, which endures to the 
end of a thousand such ages, [infinite ages, 
nevertheless, according to mortal reckoning,] 
gives rise to virtuous exertions; and that his 
night endures as long as his day." Indeed, the 
Mussulman and Tartar dynasties are beyond 
all dating. Methinks I have lived under them 
myself. In every man's brain is the Sanscrit. 
The Vedas and their Angas are not so ancient 
as serene contemplation. Why will we be im- 
posed on by antiquity? Is the babe young? 
When I behold it, it seems more venerable than 
the oldest man; it is more ancient than Nestor 
or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles of father 



1SS A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Saturn himself. And do we live but in the 
present? How broad a line is that? I sit now 
on a stump whose rings number centuries of 
growth. If I look around I see that the soil is 
composed of the remains of just such stumps, 
ancestors to this. The earth is covered with 
mould. I thrust this stick many aeons deep into 
its surface, and with my heel make a deeper 
furrow than the elements have plowed here 
for a thousand years. If I listen, I hear the 
peep of frogs which is older than the slime of 
Egypt, and the distant drumming of a partridge 
on a log, as if it were the pulse beat of the sum- 
mer air. I raise my fairest and freshest flowers 
in the old mould. Why, what we would fain 
call new is not skin deep; the earth is not yet 
stained bj^ it. It is not the fertile ground which 
we walk on, but the leaves that flutter over our 
heads. The newest is but the oldest made 
visible to our senses. When we dig up the soil 
from a thousand feet below the surface, we call 
it new, and the plants which spring from it; 
and when our vision pierces deeper into space, 
and detects a remoter star, we call that new also. 
The place where we sit is called Hudson, — once 
it was Nottingham, — once — 

We should read history as little critically as 
we consider the landscape, and be more inter- 
ested by the atmospheric tints and various lights 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 189 

and shades which the intervening spaces create, 
than by its groundwork and composition. It 
is the morning now turned evening and seen in 
the west, — the same sun, but a new light and 
atmosphere. Its beauty is like the sunset; not 
a fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but 
atmospheric and roving or free. In reality, 
history fluctuates as the face of the landscape 
from morning to evening. What is of moment 
is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; 
we want not its then, but its now. We do not com- 
plain that the mountains in the horizon are blue 
and indistinct; they are the more like the heavens. 
Of what moment are facts that can be lost, — 
which need to be commemorated? The monu- 
ment of death will outlast the memory of the 
dead. The pyramids do not tell us the tale 
that was confided to them; the living fact com- 
memorates itself. Why look in the dark for 
light? Strictly speaking, the historical societies 
have not recovered one fact from oblivion, but 
are themselves, instead of the fact, that is lost. 
The researcher is more memorable than the 
researched. The crowd stood admiring the 
mist and the dim outlines of the trees seen 
through it, when one of their number advanced 
to explore the phenomenon, and with fresh 
admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly 
retreating figure. It is astonishing with how 
little cooperation of the societies the past is 



190 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

remembered. Its story has indeed had another 
muse than has been assigned it. There is a 
good instance of the manner in which all history 
began, in Alwakidis' Arabian Chronicle, " I was 
informed by Ahmed Almatin Aljorhami, who 
had it from Rephaa Ebn Kais Aldmiri, who had 
it from Saiph Ebn Fabalah Alchatquarmi, who 
had it from Thabet Ebn Alkamah, who said he 
was present at the action." These fathers of 
history were not anxious to preserve, but to 
learn the fact; and hence it was not forgotten. 
Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover 
the past ; the past cannot be presented; we cannot 
know what we are not. But one veil hangs over 
past, present, and future, and it is the province 
of the historian to find out, not what was, but 
what is. Where a battle has been fought, you 
will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts ; 
where a battle is being fought, there are hearts 
beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, and 
not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs 
again. Does Nature remember, think you, that 
they ivere men, or not rather that they are bones? 
Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It 
should be more modern. It is written as if 
the spectator should be thinking of the back- 
side of the picture on the wall, or as if the author 
expected that the dead would be his readers, 
and wished to detail to them their own experience. 
Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 191 

retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuild- 
ing the works behind, as they are battered down 
by the encroachments of time; but while they 
loiter, they and their works both fall a prey to 
the arch enemy. History has neither the vener- 
ableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the 
modern. It does as if it would go to the begin- 
ning of things, which natural history might with 
reason assume to do; but consider the Universal 
History, and then tell us — when did burdock 
and plantain sprout first? It has been so written 
for the most part, that the times it describes 
are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. 
They are dark, as one has observed, because we 
are so in the dark about them. The sun rarely 
shines in history, what with the dust and con- 
fusion; and when we meet with any cheering 
fact which implies the presence of this luminary, 
we excerpt and modernize it. As when we read 
in the history of the Saxons that Edwin of North- 
umbria " caused stakes to be fixed in the high- 
ways where he had seen a clear spring," and 
"brazen dishes were chained to them, to re- 
fresh the weary sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin 
had himself experienced." This is worth all 
Arthur's twelve battles. 

" Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger 
day: 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 
Than fifty years of Europe better one New England ray! " 



192 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; 
it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the 
Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex 
our bowels that we may be somebody else to 
explain him. If I am not I, who will be? 

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; 
though the darkness is not so much a quality 
of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance 
of time, but a distance of relation, which makes 
thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the 
heart of this generation is fair and bright still. 
Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods 
of light, for there is the sun and daylight in 
her literature and art. Homer does not allow 
us to forget that the sun shone, — nor Phidias, 
nor the Parthenon. Yet no era has been wholly 
dark, nor will we too hastily submit to the 
historian, and congratulate ourselves on a blaze 
of light. If we could pierce the obscurity of 
those remote years, we should find it light enough; 
only there is not our day. Some creatures are 
made to see in the dark. There has always been 
the same amount of light in the world. The 
new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, 
do not affect the general illumination, for only 
our glasses appreciate them. The eyes of the 
oldest fossil remains, they tell us, indicate that 
the same laws of light prevailed then as now. 
Always the laws of light are the same, but the 
modes and degrees of seeing vary. The gods 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 193 

are partial to no era, but steadily shines their 
light in the heavens, while the eye of the be- 
holder is turned to stone. There was but 
the sun and the eye from the first. The ages 
have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered 
a fibre of the other. 

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, 
the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, 
wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's in- 
heritance, still reflecting some of their original 
splendor, like the fragments of clouds tinted by 
the rays of the departed sun; reaching into the 
latest summer day, and allying this hour to the 
morning of creation; as the poet sings: — 

"Fragments of the lofty strain 

Float down the tide of years, 

As buoyant on the stormy main 

A parted wreck appears; " — 

these are the materials and hints for a history of 
the rise and progress of the race; how, from the 
condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of 
men, and arts were gradually invented. Let 
a thousand surmises shed some light on this 
story. We will not be confined by historical, 
even geological periods, which would allow us 
to doubt of a progress in human affairs. If we 
rise above this wisdom for the day, we shall 
expect that this morning of the race, in which 
it has been supplied with the simplest necessaries, 



194 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

with corn, and wine, and honey, and oil, and fire, 
and articulate speech, and agricultural and 
other arts, reared up, by degrees, from the con- 
dition of ants, to men, will be succeeded by a day 
of equally progressive splendor; that, in the 
lapse of the divine periods, other divine agents 
and godlike men will assist to elevate the race 
as much above its present condition. But we 
do not know much about it. 

Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while 
his companion slumbered on the bank. Sud- 
denly, a boatman's horn was heard, echoing 
from shore to shore, to give notice of his approach 
to the farmer's wife, with whom he was to take 
his dinner, though in that place only muskrats 
and king-fishers seemed to hear. The current 
of our reflections and our slumbers being thus 
disturbed, we weighed anchor once more. 

As we proceeded on our way in the afternoon, 
the western bank became lower, or receded 
further from the channel in some places, leaving 
a few trees only to fringe the water's edge; while 
the eastern rose abruptly here and there into 
wooded hills fifty or sixty feet high. The bass, 
tilia Americana, also called the lime or linden, 
which was a new tree to us, overhung the water 
with its broad and rounded leaf, interspersed 
with clusters of small hard berries, now nearly 
ripe, and made an agreeable shade for us sailors. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 195 

The inner bark of this genus is the bast, the 
material of the fisherman's matting, and the 
ropes, and peasant's shoes, of which the Russians 
make so much use, and also of nets and a coarse 
cloth in some places. According to poets, this 
was once Philyra, one of the Oceanides. The 
ancients are said to have used its bark for the 
roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a kind of 
paper called Philyra. They also made bucklers 
of its wood, " on account of its flexibility, light- 
ness, and resiliency." It was once much used 
for carving, and is still in demand for panels of 
carriages, and for various uses for which tough- 
ness and flexibility are required. Its sap affords 
sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is 
said to be preferred to any other. Its leaves 
are in some countries given to cattle, a kind of 
chocolate has been made of its fruit, a medicine 
has been prepared from an infusion of its flowers, 
and finally, the charcoal made of its wood is 
greatly valued for gunpowder. 

The sight of this tree reminded us that we had 
reached a strange land to us. As we sailed un- 
der this canopy of leaves we saw the sky through 
its chinks, and, as it were, the meaning and idea 
of the tree stamped in a thousand hieroglyphics 
on the heavens. The universe is so aptly fitted 
to our organization, that the eye wanders and 
reposes at the same time. On every side there 
is something to soothe and refresh this sense. 



196 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Look up at the tree-tops and see how finely 
Nature finishes off her work there. See how 
the pines spire without end higher and higher, 
and make a graceful fringe to the earth. And 
who shall count the finer cobwebs that soar and 
float away from their utmost tops, and the myr- 
iad insects that dodge between them. Leaves 
are of more various forms than the alphabets 
of all languages put together; of the oaks alone 
there are hardly two alike, and each expresses 
its own character. 

In all her products Nature only develops her 
simplest germs. One would say that it was no 
great stretch of invention to create birds. The 
hawk, which now takes his flight over the top 
of the wood, was at first perchance only a leaf 
which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling 
leaves she came in the course of ages to the loft- 
ier flight and clear carol of the bird. 

Salmon Brook comes in from the west under 
the railroad, a mile and a half below the village 
of Nashua. We rode up far enough into the 
meadows which border it, to learn its piscatorial 
history from a hay -maker on its banks. He 
told us that the silver eel was formerly abundant 
here, and pointed to some sunken creels at its 
mouth. This man's memory and imagination 
were fertile in fishermen's tales of floating isles 
in bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously 
stocked with fishes, and would have kept us 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 197 

till night-fall to listen, but we could not afford 
to loiter in this roadstead, and so stood out to 
our sea again. Though we never trod in these 
meadows, but only touched their margin with our 
hands, we still retain a pleasant memory of them. 

Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a 
translation from the Indian, was a favorite 
haunt of the aborigines. Here too the first 
white settlers of Nashua planted, and some dents 
in the earth, where their houses stood, and the 
wrecks of ancient apple trees, are still visible. 
About one mile up this stream stood the house 
of old John Lovewell, who was an ensign in the 
army of Oliver Cromwell, and the father of 
"famous Captain Lovewell." He settled here 
before 1690, and died about 1754, at the age of 
one hundred and twenty years. He is thought 
to have been engaged in the famous Narragan- 
sett swamp fight, which took place in 1675, before 
he came here. The Indians are said to have 
spared him in succeeding wars on account of 
his kindness to them. Even in 1700 he was so 
old and gray-headed that his scalp was worth 
nothing, since the French Governor offered no 
bounty for such. I have stood in the dent of 
his cellar on the bank of the brook, and talked 
there with one whose grandfather had, whose 
father might have, talked with Lovewell. Here 
also he had a mill in his old age, and kept a 
small store. He was remembered by some who 



198 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

were recently living, as a hale old man who drove 
the boys out of his orchard with his cane. — 
Consider the triumphs of the mortal man, and 
what poor trophies it would have to show, to 
wit: He cobbled shoes without glasses at a 
hundred, and cut a handsome swathe at a hun- 
dred and five! — Lovewell's house is said to 
have been the first which Mrs. Dustin reached 
on her escape from the Indians. Here probably 
the hero of Pequawket was born and bred. 
Close by may be seen the cellar and the grave- 
stone of Joseph Hassell, who, as was elsewhere 
recorded, with his wife Anna and son Benjamin, 
and Mary Marks, " were slain by our Indian 
enemies on Sept. 2d [1691] in the evening." 
As Gookin observed on a previous occasion, 
"The Indian rod upon the English backs had 
not yet done God's errand." Salmon Brook 
near its mouth is still a solitary stream, meander- 
ing through woods and meadows, while the then 
uninhabited mouth of the Nashua now resounds 
with the din of a manufacturing town. 

A stream from Otternic pond in Hudson comes 
in just above Salmon Brook, on the opposite 
side. There was a good view of Uncannunuc, 
the most conspicuous mountain in these parts, 
from the bank here, seen rising over the west end 
of the bridge above. We soon after passed the 
village of Nashua, on the river of the same name, 
where there is a covered bridge over the Merri- 




On the Hudson shore opposite Nashua 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 199 

mack. The Nashua, which is one of the largest 
tributaries, flows from Wachusett mountain, 
through Lancaster, Groton, and other towns, 
where it has formed well-known elm-shaded 
meadows, but near its mouth it is obstructed 
by falls and factories, and did not tempt us to 
explore it. 

Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another 
companion, I have crossed the broad valley of 
the Nashua, over which we had so long looked 
westward from the Concord hills without seeing it 
to the blue mountains in the horizon. So many 
streams, so many meadows and woods and 
quiet dwellings of men had lain concealed between 
us and those Delectable Mountains; — from yon- 
der hill on the road to Tyngsboro' you may get 
a good view of them. — There where it seemed 
uninterrupted forest to our youthful eyes, be- 
tween two neighboring pines in the horizon, lay 
the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream 
was even then winding at its bottom, and then, 
as now, it was here silently mingling its waters 
with the Merrimack. The clouds which floated 
over its meadows and were born there, seen far 
in the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, 
had adorned a thousand evening skies for us. 
But as it were by a turf wall this valley was con- 
cealed, and in our journey to those hills it was 
first gradually revealed to us. Summer and 
winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline 



200 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of the mountains, to which distance and in- 
distinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so 
that they served to interpret all the allusions 
of poets and travellers. Standing on the Con- 
cord Cliffs we thus spoke our mind to them: — - 

With frontier strength ye stand your ground, 

With grand content ye circle round, 

Tumultuous silence for all sound, 

Ye distant nursery of rills, 

Monadnock and the Peterboro' hills; — 

Firm argument that never stirs, 

Outeircling the philosophers, — 

Like some vast fleet, 

Sailing through rain and sleet, 

Through winter's cold and summer's heat; 

Still holding on upon your high emprise, 

Until ye find a shore amid the skies; 

Not skulking close to land, 

With cargo contraband. 

For they who sent a venture out by ye 

Have set the Sun to see 

Their honesty. 

Ships of the line, each one, 

Ye westward run, 

Convoying clouds, 

Which cluster in your shrouds, 

Always before the gale, 

Under a press of sail, 

With weight of metal all untold, — 

I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here, 

Immeasurable depth of hold, 

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear. 

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure 
In your novel western leisure; 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 201 

So cool your brows and freshly blue, 

As Time had naught for ye to do; 

For ye lie at your length, 

An unappropriated strength, 

Unhewn primeval timber, 

For knees so stiff, for masts so Umber; 

The stock of which new earths are made, 

One day to be our western trade, 

Fit for the stanchions of a world 

Which through the seas of space is hurled. 

While we enjoy a lingering ray, 

Ye still o'ertop the western day, 

Reposing yonder on God's croft 

Like solid stacks of hay; 

So bold a line as ne'er was writ 

On any page by human wit; 

The forest glows as if 

An enemy's camp-fires shone 

Along the horizon, 

Or the day's funeral pyre 

Were lighted there; 

Edged with silver and with gold, 

The clouds hang o'er in damask fold, 

And with such depth of amber light 

The west is dight, 

Where still a few rays slant, 

That even Heaven seems extravagant. 

Watatic Hill 

Lies on the horizon's sill 

Like a child's toy left over night, 

And other duds to left and right, 

On the earth's edge, mountains and trees, 

Stand as they were on air graven, 

Or as the vessels in a haven 

Await the morning breeze. 



202 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I fancy even 

Through your defiles windeth the way to Heaven; 

And yonder still, in spite of history's page, 

Linger the golden and the silver age; 

Upon the laboring gale 

The news of future centuries is brought, 

And of new dynasties of thought, 

From your remotest vale. 

But special I remember thee, 

Wachusett, who like me 

Standest alone without society. 

Thy far blue eye, 

A remnant of the sky, 

Seen through the clearing or the gorge, 

Or from the windows of the forge, 

Doth leaven all it passes by. 

Nothing is true 

But stands 'tween me and you, 

Thou western pioneer. 

Who know'st not shame nor fear, 

By venturous spirit driven 

Under the eaves of Heaven; 

And can'st expand thee there, 

And breathe enough of air ? 

Even beyond the West 

Thou migratest, 

Into unclouded tracts, 

Without a pilgrim's axe, 

Cleaving thy road on high 

With thy well-tempered brow, 

And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky. 

Upholding Heaven, holding down earth, 

Thy pastime from thy birth; 

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other, 

May I approve myself thy worthy brother! 

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants 
of happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 203 

blue wall which bounded the western horizon, 
though not without misgivings that thereafter 
no visible fairy land would exist for us. But 
it would be long to tell of our adventures, and 
we have no time this afternoon, transporting 
ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua 
valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We 
have since made many similar excursions to the 
principal mountains of New England and New 
York, and even far in the wilderness, and have 
passed a night on the summit of many of them. 
And now when we look again westward from 
our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock 
have retreated once more among the blue and 
fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our 
eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, 
where we have pitched our tent for a night, and 
boiled our hasty -pudding amid the clouds. 

As late as 1724 there was no house on the 
north side of the Nashua, but only scattered 
wigwams and gristly forests between this fron- 
tier and Canada. In September of that year, 
two men who were engaged in making turpen- 
tine on that side, for such were the first enter- 
prises in the wilderness, were taken captive 
and carried to Canada by a party of thirty 
Indians. Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable 
going to look for them, found the hoops of their 
barrel cut, and the turpentine spread on the 



204 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ground. I have been told by an inhabitant of 
Tyngsboro', who had the story from his ances- 
tors, that one of these captives, when the Indians 
were about to upset his barrel of turpentine, 
seized a pine knot and, flourishing it, swore so 
resolutely that he would kill the first who touched 
it, that they refrained, and when at length he 
returned from Canada he found it still standing. 
Perhaps there was more than one barrel. — How- 
ever this may have been, the scouts knew by 
marks on the trees, made with coal mixed with 
grease, that the men were not killed, but taken 
prisoners. One of the company, named Far- 
well, perceiving that the turpentine had not 
done spreading, concluded that the Indians had 
been gone but a short time, and they accord- 
ingly went in instant pursuit. Contrary to 
the advice of Farwell, following directly on their 
trail up the Merrimack, they fell into an ambus- 
cade near Thornton's Ferry, in the present town 
of Merrimack, and nine were killed, only one, 
Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. The 
men of Dunstable went out and picked up their 
bodies, and carried them all down to Dunstable 
and buried them. It is almost word for word 
as in the Robin Hood ballad : — 

" They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham, 
As many there did know, 
They digg'd them graves in their churchyard, 
And they buried them all a-row." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 205 

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, 
and they were not exactly all a-row. You may 
read in the churchyard at Dunstable, under the 
"Memento Mori," and the name of one of 
them, how they " departed this life," and 

" This man with seven more that lies in 
this grave was slew all in a day by 
the Indians." 

The stones of some others of the company stand 
around the common grave with their separate 
inscriptions. Eight were buried here, but nine 
were killed, according to the best authorities. 

"Gentle river, gentle river, 

Lo, thy streams are stained with gore, 
Many a brave and noble captain 
Floats along thy willowed shore. 

All beside thy limpid waters. 

All beside thy sands so bright, 
Indian Chiefs and Christian warriors 

Joined in fierce and mortal fight." 

It is related in the history of Dunstable, that 
on the return of Farwell the Indians were en- 
gaged by a fresh party, which they compelled 
to retreat, and pursued as far as the Nashua, 
where they fought across the stream at its mouth. 
After the departure of the Indians, the figure 
of an Indian's head was found carved by them 
on a large tree by the shore, which circumstance 



206 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

has given its name to this part of the village of 
Nashville, — the "Indian Head." "It was ob- 
served by some judicious," says Gookin, refer- 
ring to Philip's war, "that at the beginning of 
the war, the English soldiers made a nothing of 
the Indians, and many spake words to this effect; 
that one Englishman was sufficient to chase ten 
Indians; many reckoned it was no other but 
Veni, vidi, vici." But we may conclude that 
the judicious would by this time have made a 
different observation. 

Farwell appears to have been the only one 
who had studied his profession, and understood 
the business of hunting Indians. He lived to 
fight another day, for the next year he was Love- 
well's Lieutenant at Pequawket, but that time, 
as we have related, left his bones in the wilder- 
ness. His name still reminds us of twilight days 
and forest scouts on Indian trails, with an uneasy 
scalp; — an indispensable hero to New England. 
As the more recent poet of Lovewell's fight has 
sung, halting a little but bravely still; — 

"Then did the crimson streams that flowed, 
Seem like the waters of the brook, 
That brightly shine, that loudly daeh, 
Far down the cliffs of Agiochook." 

These battles sound incredible to us. I think 
posterity will doubt if such things ever were; 
if our bold ancestors who settled this land were 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 207 

not struggling rather with the forest shadows, 
and not with a copper-colored race of men. 
They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled 
woods. Now, only a few arrow-heads are turned 
up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, 
or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy 
and unreal. 

It is a wild and antiquated looking grave-yard, 
overgrown with bushes, on the high road, about 
a quarter of a mile from and overlooking the 
Merrimack, with deserted mill stream bounding 
it on one side, where lie the earthly remains of 
the ancient inhabitants of Dunstable. We pas- 
sed it three or four miles below here. You may 
read there the names of Love well, Far well, and 
many others whose families were distinguished 
in Indian warfare. We noticed there two large 
masses of granite more than a foot thick and 
rudely squared, lying flat on the ground over the 
remains of the first pastor and his wife. 

It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere 
under stones, — 

"Strata jacent passim suo quseque sub" lapide — '■ 

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. 
When the stone is a slight one, and stands up- 
right, pointing to the skies, it does not oppress 



208 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the spirits of the traveller to meditate by it; 
but these did seem a little heathenish to us; and 
so are all large monuments over men's bodies, 
from the pyramids down. A monument should 
at least be " star-y-pointing, " to indicate whither 
the spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like the 
body it has deserted. There have been some 
nations who could do nothing but construct 
tombs, and these are the only traces which they 
have left. They are the heathen. But why 
these stones, so upright and emphatic, like ex- 
clamation points ! What was there so remark- 
able that lived? Why should the monument be 
so much more enduring than the fame which 
it is designed to commemorate, — a stone to a 
bone? "Here lies," — "Here lies"; — why do 
they not sometimes write, There rises? Is 
it a monument to the body only that is intended? 
"Having reached the term of his natural life;" 
— would it not be truer to say, Having reached 
the term of his unnatural life? The rarest 
quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character 
is given it should be as severely true as the de- 
cision of the three judges below, and not the 
partial testimony of friends. Friends and con- 
temporaries should supply only the name and 
date, and leave it to posterity to write the 
epitaph. 

Here lies an honest man, 
Rear-Admiral Van. 




The old Dunstable graveyard 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 209 

Faith, then ye have 

Two in one grave, 

For in his favor, 

Here too lies the Engraver. 

Fame itself is but an epitaph ; as late, as false, as 
true. But they only are the true epitaphs which 
Old Mortality retouches. 

A man might well pray that he may not taboo 
or curse any portion of Nature by being buried 
in it. For the most part, the man's spirit 
makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it 
is therefore much to the credit of Little John, 
the famous follower of Robin Hood, that his 
grave was "long celebrous for the yielding of 
excellent whetstones." I confess that I have 
but little love for such collections as they have 
at the Catacombs, Pere la Chaise, Mount Au- 
burn, and even this Dunstable grave-yard. At 
any rate, nothing but great antiquity can make 
grave-yards interesting to me. I have no 
friends there. It may be that I am not compe- 
tent to write the poetry of the grave. The far- 
mer who has skimmed his farm might perchance 
leave his body to Nature to be plowed in, and 
in some measure restore its fertility. We should 
not retard but forward her economies. 

Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, 
and the woods were gained again, and we rowed 
slowly on before sunset, looking for a solitary 



210 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

place in which to spend the night. A few even- 
ing clouds began to be reflected in the water, 
and the surface was dimpled only here and there 
by a muskrat crossing the stream. We camped 
at length near Penichook Brook, on the confines 
of Nashville, by a deep ravine, under the skirts 
of a pine wood, where the dead pine leaves were 
our carpet, and their tawny boughs stretched 
over head. But fire and smoke soon tamed the 
scene; the rocks consented to be our walls, and 
the pines our roof. A woodside was already 
the fittest locality for us. 

The wilderness is near, as well as dear, to every 
man. Even the oldest villages are indebted 
to the border of wild wood which surrounds 
them, more than to the gardens of men. There 
is something indescribably inspiriting and beau- 
tiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and oc- 
casionally jutting into the midst of new towns, 
which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox burrows, 
have sprung up in their midst. The very up- 
rightness of the pines and maples asserts the 
ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our 
lives need the relief of such a background, where 
the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. 

We had found a safe harbor for our boat, 
and as the sun was setting carried up our furni- 
ture, and soon arranged our house upon the bank, 
and while the kettle steamed at the tent door, 
we chatted of distant friends, and of the sights 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 211 

we were to behold, and wondered which way the 
towns lay from us. Our cocoa was soon boiled, 
and supper set upon our chest, and we length- 
ened out this meal, like old voyageurs, with our 
talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the 
ground, and read in the gazetteer when the first 
settlers came here and got a township granted. 
Then, when supper was done, and we had writ- 
ten the journal of our voyage, we wrapped our 
buffaloes about us, and lay down with our heads 
pillowed on our arms, listening awhile to the 
distant baying of a dog, or the murmurs of the 
river, or to the wind, which had not gone to 
rest, — 

The western wind came lumbering in, 
Bearing a faint Pacific din, 
Our evening mail, swift at the call 
Of its Post-Master General; 
Laden with news from Californ', 
Whate'er transpired hath since morn, 
How wags the world by brier and brake 
From hence to Athabasca lake; — 

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star 
which glimmered through our cotton roof. 
Perhaps at midnight one was awakened by a 
cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, or by a 
hunting spider in his eye, and was lulled asleep 
again by some streamlet purling its way along 
at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine in 
our neighborhood. It was pleasant to lie with 



212 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

our heads so low in the grass, and hear what a 
tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was. A thou- 
sand little artisans beat on their anvils all night 
long. 

Far in the night, as we were falling asleep on 
the bank of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro 
beating a drum incessantly, in preparation for 
a country muster, as we learned, and we thought 
of the line, 

"When the drum beat at dead of night." 

We could have assured him that his beat would 
be answered, and the forces be mustered. Fear 
not, thou drummer of the night, we too will be 
there. And still he drummed on in the silence 
and the dark. This stray sound from a far-off 
sphere came to our ears from time to time, far, 
sweet, and significant, and we listened with such 
an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time we 
heard at all. No doubt he was an insignificant 
drummer enough, but his music afforded us a 
prime and leisure hour, and we felt that we were 
in season wholly. These simple sounds related 
us to the stars. Aye, there was a logic in them 
so convincing that the combined sense of man- 
kind could never make me doubt their conclu- 
sions. I stop my habitual thinking, as if the 
plow had suddenly run deeper in its furrow 
through the crust of the world. How can I go 
on, who have just stepped over such a bottomless 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 213 

skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly old 
Time winked at me, — Ah, you know me, you 
rogue, — and news had come that it was well. 
That ancient universe is in such capital health, 
I think undoubtedly it will never die. Heal 
yourselves, doctors; by God I live. — 

Then idle Time ran gadding by 
And left me with Eternity alone; 

I hear beyond the range of sound, 

I see beyond the verge of sight, — 

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting 
Something to which we are allied, at once our 
maker, our abode, our destiny, our very Selves; 
the one historic truth, the most remarkable 
fact which can become the distinct and unin- 
vited subject of our thought, the actual glory of 
the universe; the only fact which a human being 
cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way for- 
get or dispense with. — 

It doth expand my privacies 
To all, and leave me single in the crowd. 

I have seen how the foundations of the world 
are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it 
will stand a good while. 

Now chiefly is my natal hour, 

And only now my prime of life. 

I will not doubt the love untold, 

Which not my worth nor want hath brought, 

Which wooed me young and wooes me old, 

And to this evening hath me brought. 



214 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

What are ears? what is Time? that this par- 
ticular series of sounds called a strain of music, 
an invisible and fairy troop which never brushed 
the dew from any mead, can be wafted down 
through the centuries from Homer to me, and 
he have been conversant with that same aerial 
and mysterious charm which now so tingles my 
ears? What a fine communication from age to 
age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the as- 
pirations of ancient men, even such as were never 
communicated by speech! It is the flower of 
language, thought colored and curved, fluent and 
flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun 's 
rays, and its purling ripples reflecting the grass 
and the clouds. A strain of music reminds me of 
a passage of the Vedas, and I associate with it 
the idea of infinite remoteness, as well as beauty 
and serenity, for to the senses that is furthest 
from us which addresses the greatest depth 
within us. It teaches us again and again to 
trust the remotest and finest as the divinest 
instinct, and makes a dream our only real ex- 
perience. As polishing expresses the vein in 
marble and grain in wood, so music brings out 
what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the 
sole patron of music. That harmony which 
exists naturally between the hero's moods and 
the universe the soldier would fain imitate with 
drum and trumpet. When we are in health 
all sounds fife and drum for us ; we hear the notes 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 215 

of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying 
away when we awake in the dawn. Marching 
is when the pulse of the hero beats in unison 
with the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the 
measure of the universe; then there is true cour- 
age and invincible strength. 

Plutarch says that "Plato thinks the gods 
never gave men music, the science of melody 
and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle 
the ear; but that the discordant parts of the 
circulations and beauteous fabric of the soul, 
and that of it that roves about the body, and 
many times, for want of tune and air, breaks 
forth into many extravagances and excesses, 
might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound 
up to their former consent and agreement." 

Music is the sound of the universal laws pro- 
mulgated. It is the only assured tone. There 
are in it such strains as far surpass any man's 
faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things 
are to be learned which it will be worth the while 
to learn. Formerly I heard these 

RUMORS FROM AN .EOLIAN HARP 

There is a vale which none hath seen, 
Where foot of man has never been, 
Such as here lives with toil and strife, 
An anxious and a sinful life. 

There every virtue has its birth, 
Ere it descends upon the earth, 



216 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

And thither every deed returns, 
Which in the generous bosom burns. 

There love is warm, and youth is young, 
And poetry is yet unsung, 
For Virtue still adventures there, 
And freely breathes her native air. 

And ever, if you hearken well, 
You still may hear its vesper bell, 
And tread of high-souled men go by, 
Their thoughts conversing with the sky. 

According to Jamblichus, "Pythagoras did 
not procure for himself a thing of this kind 
through instruments or the voice, but employing 
a certain ineffable divinity, and which it is 
difficult to apprehend, he extended his ears and 
fixed his intellect in the sublime symphonies of 
the world, he alone hearing and understanding, 
as it appears, the universal harmony and con- 
sonance of the spheres, and the stars that are 
moved through them, and which produce a 
fuller and more intense melody than anything 
effected by mortal sounds." 

Travelling on foot very early one morning due 
east from here about twenty miles, from Caleb 
Harriman 's tavern in Hampstead toward Haver- 
hill, when I reached the railroad in Plaistow, I 
heard at some distance a faint music in the air 
like an ^Eolian harp, which I immediately sus- 
pected to proceed from the cord of the tele- 
graph vibrating in the just awakening morning 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 217 

wind, and applying my ear to one of the posts I 
was convinced that it was so. It was the tele- 
graph harp singing its message through the 
country, its message sent not by men but by 
gods. Perchance, like the statue of Memnon, it 
resounds only in the morning when the first 
rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the first 
lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore, — that vibrat- 
ing cord high in the air over the shores of earth. 
So have all things their higher and their lower 
uses. I heard a fairer news than the journals 
ever print. It told of things worthy to hear, and 
worthy of the electric fluid to carry the news of, 
not of the price of cotton and flour, but it hinted 
at the price of the world itself and of things 
which are priceless, of absolute truth and beauty. 
Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood 
to fresh extravagance that night. The clarion 
sound and clang of corselet and buckler were 
heard from many a hamlet of the soul, and many 
a knight was arming for the fight behind the 
encamped stars. — 

" Before each van 
Priek forth the aery knights, and couch their spears 
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms 
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns." 



Away! away! away! away! 

Ye have not kept your secret well, 
I will abide that other day, 

Those other lands ye tell. 



218 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Has time no leisure left for these, 

The acts that ye rehearse? 
Is not eternity a lease 

For better deeds than verse? 

'T is sweet to hear of heroes dead, 

To know them still alive, 
But sweeter if we earn their bread, 

And in us they survive. 

Our life should feed the springs of fame 

With a perennial wave, 
As ocean feeds the babbling founts 

Which find in it their grave. 

Ye skies drop gently round my breast, 

And be my corselet blue, 
Ye earth receive my lance in rest, 

My faithful charger you; 

Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, 

My arrow-tips ye are, — 
I see the routed foemen fly, 

My bright spears fixed are. 

Give me an angel for a foe, 
Fix now the place and time, 

And straight to meet him I will go 
Above the starry chime. 

And with our clashing bucklers' clang 
The heavenly spheres shall ring, 

While bright the northern lights shall hang 
Beside our tourneying. 

And if she lose her champion true, 

Tell Heaven not despair, 
For I will be her champion new, 

Her fame I will repair. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 219 

There was a high wind this night, which we 
afterwards learned had been still more violent 
elsewhere, and had done much injury to the 
corn-fields far and near; but we only heard it sigh 
from time to time, as if it had no license to shake 
the foundations of our tent; the pines murmured, 
the water rippled, and the tent rocked a little, 
but we only laid our ears closer to the ground 
while the blast swept on to alarm other men, and 
long before sunrise we were ready to pursue 
our voyage as usual. 



220 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 



TUESDAY 

"On either side the river lie 
Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 
And thro' the fields the road runs by 

To many- towered Camelot." 

— Tennyson. 

LONG before daylight we ranged abroad 
with hatchet in hand, in search of fuel, 
and made the yet slumbering and dream- 
ing wood resound with our blows. Then with 
our fire we burned up a portion of the loitering 
night, while the kettle sang its homely strain 
to the morning star. We tramped about the 
shore, waked all the muskrats, and scared up the 
bittern and birds that were asleep upon their 
roosts; we hauled up and upset our boat, and 
washed it and rinsed out the clay, talking aloud 
as if it were broad day, until at length, by three 
o'clock, we had completed our preparations and 
were ready to pursue our voyage as usual; so, 
shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into 
the fog. 

Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, 
we trusted that there was a bright day behind it. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 221 

Ply the oars! away! away! 
In each dew-drop of the morning 

Lies the promise of a day. 
Rivers from the sunrise flow, 

Springing with the dewy morn; 
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row, 
Idle noon nor sunset know, 

Ever even with the dawn, 

Belknap, the historian of this State, says that 
"In the neighborhood of fresh rivers and ponds, 
a whitish fog in the morning, lying over the water, 
is a sure indication of fair weather for that day; 
and when no fog is seen, rain is expected before 
night." That which seemed to us to invest the 
world, was only a narrow and shallow wreath of 
vapor stretched over the channel of the Merri- 
mack from the sea-board to the mountains. 
More extensive fogs, however, have their own 
limits. I once saw the day break from the top 
of Saddle-back Mountain in Massachusetts, 
above the clouds. As we cannot distinguish 
objects through this dense fog, let me tell this 
story more at length. 

I had come over the hills on foot and alone in 
serene summer days, plucking the raspberries 
by the wayside, and occasionally buying a loaf 
of bread at a farmer's house, with a knapsack 
on my back, which held a few traveller's books 
and a change of clothing, and a staff in my hand. 
I had that morning looked down from the Hoo- 



222 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

sack Mountain, where the road crosses it, on 
the village of North Adams in the valley, three 
miles away under my feet, showing how uneven 
the earth may sometimes be, and making it 
seem an accident that it should ever be level 
and convenient for the feet of man. Putting a 
little rice and sugar and a tin cup into my knap- 
sack at this village, I began in the afternoon to 
ascend the mountain, whose summit is three 
thousand six hundred feet above the level of 
the sea, and was seven or eight miles distant by 
the path. My route lay up a long and spacious 
valley called the Bellows, because the winds 
rush up or down it with violence in storms, 
sloping up to the very clouds between the prin- 
cipal range and a lower mountain. There were 
a few farms scattered along at different eleva- 
tions, each commanding a fine prospect of the 
mountains to the north, and a stream ran down 
the middle of the valley, on which near the head 
there was a mill. It seemed a road for the pil- 
grim to enter upon who would climb to the gates 
of heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, and now 
over the brook on a slight bridge, still gradually 
ascending all the while, with a sort of awe, and 
filled with indefinite expectations as to what 
kind of inhabitants and what kind of nature I 
should come to at last. It now seemed some 
advantage that the earth was uneven, for one 
could not imagine a more noble position for a 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 223 

farm-house than this vale afforded, further from 
or nearer to its head, from a glen-like seclusion 
overlooking the country at a great elevation 
between these two mountain walls. 

It reminded me of the homesteads of the 
Huguenots on Staten Island, off the coast of 
New Jersey. The hills in the interior of this 
island, though comparatively low, are penetrated 
in various directions by similar sloping valleys 
on a humble scale, gradually narrowing and ris- 
ing to the centre, and at the head of these 
the Huguenots, who were the first settlers, 
placed their houses, quite within the land, in 
rural and sheltered places, in leafy recesses where 
the breeze played with the poplar and the gum 
tree, from which, with equal security in calm 
and storm, they looked out through a widening 
vista, over miles of forest and stretching salt 
marsh, to the Huguenots' Tree, an old elm on 
the shore at whose root they had landed, and 
across the spacious outer bay of New York to 
Sandy Hook and the Highlands of Neversink, 
and thence over leagues of the Atlantic, perchance 
to some faint vessel in the horizon, almost a 
day's sail on her voyage to that Europe whence 
they had come. When walking in the interior 
there, in the midst of rural scenery, where there 
was as little to remind me of the ocean as amid 
the New Hampshire hills, I have suddenly, 
through a gap, a cleft or "clove road," as the 



224 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Dutch settlers called it, caught sight of a ship 
under full sail, over a field of corn, twenty or 
thirty miles at sea. The effect was similar, 
since I had no means of measuring distances, to 
seeing a painted ship passed backwards and for- 
wards through a magic lantern. 

But to return to the mountain. It seemed as 
if he must be the most singular and heavenly- 
minded man whose dwelling stood highest up 
the valley. The thunder had rumbled at my 
heels all the way, but the shower passed off in 
another direction, though if it had not, I half 
believed that I should get above it. I at length 
reached the last house but one, where the path 
to the summit diverged to the right, while the 
summit itself rose directly in front. But I 
determined to follow up the valley to its head, 
and then find my own route up the steep, as 
the shorter and more adventurous way. I had 
thoughts of returning to this house, which was 
well kept and so nobly placed, the next day, and 
perhaps remaining a week there, if I could 
have entertainment. Its mistress was a frank 
and hospitable young woman, who stood before 
me in a dishabille, busily and unconcernedly 
combing her long black hair while she talked, 
giving her head the necessary toss with each 
sweep of the comb, with lively, sparkling eyes, 
and full of interest in that lower world from which 
I had come, talking all the while as familiarly 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 225 

as if she had known me for years, and reminding 
me of a cousin of mine. She at first had taken 
me for a student from Williamstown, for they 
went by in parties, she said, either riding or 
walking, almost every pleasant day, and were 
a pretty wild set of fellows ; but they never went 
by the way I was going. As I passed the last 
house, a man called out to know what I had 
to sell, for seeing my knapsack, he thought that 
I might be a pedler, who was taking this unusual 
route over the ridge of the valley into South 
Adams. He told me that it was still four or 
five miles to the summit by the path which I 
had left, though not more than two in a straight 
line from where I was, but nobody ever went this 
way; there was no path, and I should find it as 
steep as the roof of a house. But I knew that I 
was more used to woods and mountains than he, 
and went along through his cow-yard, while he, 
looking at the sun, shouted after me that I 
should not get to the top that night. I soon 
reached the head of the valley, but as I could 
not see the summit from this point, I ascended 
a low mountain on the opposite side, and took 
its bearing with my compass. I at once entered 
the woods, and began to climb the steep side of 
the mountain in a diagonal direction, taking the 
bearing of a tree every dozen rods. The as- 
cent was by no means difficult or unpleasant, 
and occupied much less time than it would have 



226 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

taken to follow the path. Even country people, 
I have observed, magnify the difficulty of travel- 
ling in the forest, and especially amongmountains. 
They seem to lack their usual common sense 
in this. I have climbed several higher mount- 
ains without guide or path, and have found, as 
might be expected, that it takes only more time 
and patience commonly than to travel the 
smoothest highway. It is very rare that you 
meet with obstacles in this world, which the 
humblest man has not faculties to surmount. 
It is true, we may come to a perpendicular pre- 
cipice, but we need not jump off, nor run our 
heads against it. A man may jump down his 
own cellar stairs, or dash his brains out against 
his chimney, if he is mad. So far as my expe- 
rience goes, travellers generally exaggerate the 
difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the 
difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry? 
If a person lost would conclude that after all he 
is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing 
in his own old shoes on the very spot where he 
is, and that for the time being he will live there; 
but the places that have known him, they are 
lost, — how much anxiety and danger would 
vanish. I am not alone if I stand by myself. 
Who knows where in space this globe is rolling? 
Yet we will not give ourselves up for lost, let it 
go where it will. 

I made my way steadily upward in a straight 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 227 

line through a dense undergrowth of mountain 
laurel, until the trees began to have a scraggy 
and infernal look, as if contending with frost 
goblins, and at length I reached the summit, just 
as the sun was setting. Several acres here had 
been cleared, and were covered with rocks and 
stumps, and there was a rude observatory in 
the middle which overlooked the woods. I had 
one fair view of the country before the sun went 
down, but I was too thirsty to waste any light 
in viewing the prospect, and set out directly to 
find water. First, going down a well-beaten 
path for half a mile through the low scrubby wood, 
till I came to where the water stood in the tracks 
of the horses which had carried travellers up, I 
lay down flat, and drank these dry one after 
another, a pure, cold, spring-like water, but yet 
I could not fill my dipper, though I contrived 
little syphons of grass stems and ingenious aque- 
ducts on a small scale; it was too slow a process. 
Then remembering that I had passed a moist 
place near the top on my way up, I returned to 
find it again, and here with sharp stones and my 
hands, in the twilight, I made a well about 
two feet deep, which was soon filled with pure 
cold water, and the birds too came and drank 
at it. So I filled my dipper, and making my 
way back to the observatory, collected some dry 
sticks and made a fire on some flat stones, which 
had been placed on the floor for that purpose, 



228 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and so I soon cooked my supper of rice, having 
already whittled a wooden spoon to eat it with. 
I sat up during the evening, reading by the 
light of the fire the scraps of newspapers in which 
some party had wrapped their luncheon; the 
prices current in New York and Boston, the 
advertisements, and the singular editorials which 
some had seen fit to publish, not foreseeing under 
what critical circumstances they would be read. 
I read these things at a vast advantage there, 
and it seemed to me that the advertisements, 
or what is called the business part of a paper, 
were greatly the best, the most useful, natural, 
and respectable. Almost all the opinions and 
sentiments expressed were so little considered, 
so shallow and flimsy, that I thought the very 
texture of the paper must be weaker in that part 
and tear the more easily. The advertisements 
and the prices current were more closely allied 
to nature, and were respectable in some measure 
as tide and meteorological tables are; but the 
reading matter, which I remembered was most 
prized down below, unless it was some humble 
record of science, or an extract from some old 
classic, struck me as strangely whimsical and 
crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme, 
such as youths write and after burn. The 
opinions were of that kind that are doomed to 
wear a different aspect to-morrow, like last 
year's fashions; as if mankind were very green 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 229 

indeed, and would be ashamed of themselves 
in a few years, when they had outgrown this 
verdant period. There was, moreover, a sing- 
ular disposition to wit and humor, but rarely 
the slightest real success; and the apparent 
success was a terrible satire on the attempt; as 
if the Evil Genius of man laughed the loudest 
at his best jokes. The advertisements, as I 
have said, such as were serious, and not of the 
modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and 
poetic thoughts; for commerce is really as in- 
teresting as nature. The very names of the 
commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as if 
they had been inserted in a pleasing poem. — 
Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, and Log- 
wood. Some sober, private, and original 
thought would have been grateful to read here, 
and as much in harmony with the circumstances 
as if it had been written on a mountain top ; for 
it is of a fashion which never changes, and as 
respectable as hides and log-wood, or any natu- 
ral product. What an inestimable companion 
such a scrap of paper would have been, con- 
taining some fruit of a mature life. What a 
relic! What a recipe! It seemed a divine in- 
vention, by which not mere shining coin, but 
shining and current thoughts, could be brought 
up and left there. 

As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood 
and lay down on a board against the side of the 



230 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

building, not having any blanket to cover me, 
with my head to the fire, that I might look after 
it, which is not the Indian rule. But as it grew 
colder towards midnight, I at length encased 
myself completely in boards, managing even to 
put a board on top of me, with a large stone on 
it, to keep it down, and so slept comfortably. 
I was reminded, it is true, of the Irish children, 
who inquired what their neighbors did who had 
no door to put over them in winter nights as 
they had; but I am convinced that there was 
nothing very strange in the inquiry. Those 
who have never tried it can have no idea how 
far a door, which keeps the single blanket down, 
may go toward making one comfortable. We 
are constituted a good deal like chickens, which 
taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton 
in the chimney corner, will often peep till they 
die nevertheless, but if you put in a book, or 
anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, 
and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. 
My only companions were the mice, which came 
to pick up the crumbs that had been left in those 
scraps of paper; still, as everywhere, pensioners 
on man, and not unwisely improving this ele- 
vated track for their habitation. They nibbled 
what was for them; I nibbled what was for me. 
Once or twice in the night, when I looked up, I 
saw a white cloud drifting through the windows, 
and filling the whole upper story. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 231 

This observatory was a building of consider- 
able size, erected by the students of Williams- 
town College, whose buildings might be seen by 
daylight gleaming far down in the valley. It 
would really be no small advantage if every 
college were thus located at the base of a moun- 
tain, as good at least as one well-endowed pro- 
fessorship. It were as well to be educated in 
the shadow of a mountain as in more classical 
shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not 
only that they went to the college, but that 
they went to the mountain. Every visit to its 
summit would, as it were, generalize the particu- 
lar information gained below, and subject it 
to more catholic tests. 

I was up early and perched upon the top of 
this tower to see the daybreak, for some time 
reading the names that had been engraved there 
before I could distinguish more distant objects. 
An "'untamable fly" buzzed at my elbow with 
the same nonchalance as on a molasses hogs- 
head at the end of Long Wharf. Even there I 
must attend to his stale humdrum. But now 
I come to the pith of this long digression. — 
As the light increased I discovered around me 
an ocean of mist, which reached up by chance 
exactly to the base of the tower, and shut out 
every vestige of the earth, while I was left 
floating on this fragment of the wreck of a world, 
on my carved plank in cloudland; a situation 



232 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

which required no aid from the imagination 
to render it impressive. As the light in the east 
steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly 
the new world into which I had risen in the 
night, the new terra-firma perchance of my 
future life. There was not a crevice left through 
which the trivial places we name Massachusetts, 
or Vermont, or New York, could be seen, while 
I still inhaled the clear atmosphere of a July 
morning, — if it were July there. All around 
beneath me was spread for a hundred miles 
on every side, as far as the eye could reach, an 
undulating country of clouds, answering in the 
varied swell of its surface to the terrestrial world 
it veiled. It was such a country as we might 
see in dreams, with all the delights of paradise. 
There were immense snowy pastures apparently 
smooth-shaven and firm, and shady vales be- 
tween the vaporous mountains, and far in the 
horizon I could see where some luxurious misty 
timber jutted into the prairie, and trace the 
windings of a water course, some unimagined 
Amazon or Orinoko, by the misty trees on its 
brink. As there was wanting the symbol, so 
there was not the substance of impurity, no spot 
nor stain. It was a favor for which to be for- 
ever silent to be shown this vision. The earth 
beneath had become such a flitting thing of 
lights and shadows as the clouds had been before. 
It was not merely veiled to me, but it had 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 233 

passed away like the phantom of a shadow, 
cr/aas ovap, and this new platform was gained. 
As I had climbed above storm and cloud, so by 
successive days' journeys I might reach the 
region of eternal day beyond the tapering shadow 
of the earth; aye, 

"Heaven itself shall slide 
And roll away, like melting stars that glide 
Along their oily threads." 

But when its own sun began to rise on this pure 
world, I found myself a dweller in the dazzling 
halls of Aurora, into which poets have had but 
a partial glance over the eastern hills, — drifting 
amid the saffron-colored clouds, and playing 
with the rosy fingers of the Dawn, in the very 
path of the Sun's chariot, and sprinkled with 
its dewy dust, enjoying the benignant smile, 
and near at hand the far-darting glances of the 
god. The inhabitants of earth behold commonly 
but the dark and shadowy under-side of heaven 's 
pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable 
angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that 
some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds 
are revealed. But my muse would fail to convey 
an impression of the gorgeous tapestry by which 
I was surrounded, such as men see faintly re- 
flected afar off in the chambers of the east. 
Here, as on earth, I saw the gracious god. 



231 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, . . . 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." 

But never here did "Heaven's sun" stain him- 
self. But alas, owing as I think to some un- 
worthiness in myself, my private sun did stain 
himself, and 

" Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
With ugly wrack on his celestial face," — 

for before the god had reached the zenith the 
heavenly pavement rose and embraced my 
wavering virtue, or rather I sank down again 
into that "forlorn world," from which the 
celestial Sun had hid his visage. — 

" How may a worm, that crawls along the dust, 
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high, 
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just, 
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie, 
Cloth'd with such light, as blinds the angel's eye? 
How may weak mortal ever hope to file 
His unsmooth tongue, and his dep rostrate style? 
O, raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile ! " 

In the preceding evening I had seen the 
summits of new and yet higher mountains, the 
Catskills, by which I might hope to climb to 
heaven again, and had set my compass for a 
fair lake in the south-west, which lay in my way, 
for which I now steered, descending the mountain 
by my own route, on the side opposite to that 
by which I had ascended, and soon found my- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 235 

self in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, and 
the inhabitants affirmed that it had been a 
cloudy and drizzling day wholly. 

But now we must make haste back before the 
fog disperses to the blithe Merrimack water. — 

Since that first " away! away! " 

Many a lengthy reach we've rowed, 

Still the sparrow on the spray 

Hastes to usher in the day 

With her simple stanza'd ode. 

We passed a canal boat before sunrise, grop- 
ing its way to the seaboard, and though we could 
not see it on account of the fog, the few dull, 
thumping, stertorous sounds which we heard, 
impressed us with a sense of weight and irresis- 
tible motion. One little rill of commerce already 
awake on this distant New Hampshire river. 
The fog, as it required more skill in the steering, 
enhanced the interest of our early voyage, and 
made the river seem indefinitely broad. A 
slight mist, through which objects are faintly 
visible, has the effect of expanding even ordinary 
streams, by a singular mirage, into arms of the 
sea or inland lakes. In the present instance 
it was even fragrant and invigorating, and we 
enjoyed it as a sort of earlier sunshine, or dewy 
and embryo light. 

Low-anchored cloud, 
Newfoundland air, 



236 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Fountain-head and source of rivers, 

Dew cloth, dream drapery, 

And napkin spread by fays; 

Drifting meadow of the air, 

Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, 

And in whose fenny labyrinth 

The bittern booms and heron wades; 

Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers, 

Bear only perfumes and the scent 

Of healing herbs to just men's fields. 



The same pleasant and observant historian 
whom we quoted above says, that " In the moun- 
tainous parts of the country, the ascent of vapors, 
and their formation into. clouds, is a curious and 
entertaining object. The vapors are seen rising 
in small columns like smoke from many chimneys. 
When risen to a certain height, they spread, 
meet, condense, and are attracted to the moun- 
tains, where they either distil in gentle dews, and 
replenish the springs, or descend in showers, 
accompanied with thunder. After short inter- 
missions, the process is repeated many times in 
the course of a summer day, affording to trav- 
ellers a lively illustration of what is observed 
in the book of Job, 'They are wet with the show- 
ers of the mountains.' " 

Fogs and clouds which conceal the over- 
shadowing mountains lend the breath of the plains 
to mountain vales. Even a small featured 
country acquires some grandeur in stormy 
weather, when clouds are seen drifting between 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 237 

the beholder and the neighboring hills. When 
in travelling toward Haverhill through Hamp- 
stead in this State, on the height of land be- 
tween the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or 
the sea, you commence the descent eastward, 
the view toward the coast is so distant and unex- 
pected, though the sea is invisible, that you at 
first suppose the unobstructed atmosphere to be 
a fog in the lowlands concealing hills of corre- 
sponding elevation to that you are upon; but it 
is the mist of prejudice alone, which the winds 
will not disperse. The most stupendous scenery 
ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, 
or in other words limited, and the imagination 
is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The 
actual height and breadth of a mountain or a 
water-fall are always ridiculously small; they 
are the imagined only that content us. Nature 
is not made after such a fashion as we would 
have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders 
as the scenery around our home. 

Such was the heaviness of the dews along this 
river, that we were generally obliged to leave our 
tent spread over the bows of the boat till the 
sun had dried it, to avoid mildew. We passed 
the mouth of Penichook Brook, a wild salmon 
stream, in the fog without seeing it. At length 
the sun's rays struggled through the mist and 
showed us the pines on shore dripping with dew, 
and springs trickling from the moist banks, — 



238 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms, 
Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds, 
Dandle the morning's childhood in their arms, 
And if they chanced to slip the prouder pines 
The under corylets did catch their shines, 
To gild their leaves." 



We rowed for some hours between glistening 
banks before the sun had dried the grass and 
leaves, or the day had established its character. 
Its serenity at last seemed the more profound and 
secure for the denseness of the morning's fog. 
The river became swifter, and the scenery more 
pleasing than before. The banks were steep 
and clayey for the most part, and trickling with 
water, and where a spring oozed out a few feet 
above the river, the boatmen had cut a trough out 
of a slab with their axes, and placed it so as to 
receive the water and fill their jugs conveniently. 
Sometimes this purer and cooler water, bursting 
out from under a pine or a rock, was collected 
into a basin close to the edge of, and level with 
the river, a fountain-head of the Merrimack. 
So near along life's stream are the fountains of 
innocence and youth making fertile its sandy 
margin; and the voyageur will do well to re- 
plenish his vessels often at these uncontami- 
nated sources. Some youthful spring, perchance, 
still empties with tinkling music into the oldest 
river, even when it is falling into the sea, and we 
imagine that its music is distinguished by the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 239 

river gods from the general lapse of the stream, 
and falls sweeter on their ears in proportion as it 
is nearer to the ocean. As the evaporations 
of the river feed thus these unsuspected springs 
which filter through its banks, so, perchance, 
our aspirations fall back again in springs on 
the margin of life's stream to refresh and purify 
it. The yellow and tepid river may float his 
scow, and cheer his eye with its reflections and 
its ripples, but the boatman quenches his thirst 
at this small rill alone. It is this purer and 
cooler element that chiefly sustains his life. The 
race will long survive that is thus discreet. 

Our course this morning lay between the 
territories of Merrimack, on the west, and 
Litchfield, once called Brenton's Farm, on the 
east, which townships were anciently the Indian 
Naticook. Brenton was a fur trader among 
the Indians, and these lands were granted to 
him in 1656. The latter township contains 
about five hundred inhabitants, of whom, how- 
ever, we saw none, and but few of their dwell- 
ings. Being on the river, whose banks are 
always high and generally conceal the few houses, 
the country appeared much more wild and prim- 
itive than to the traveller on the neighboring 
roads. The river is by far the most attractive 
highway, and those boatmen who have spent 
twenty or twenty -five years on it, must have had 
a much fairer, more wild and memorable ex- 



240 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

perience than the dusty and jarring one of the 
teamster, who has driven, during the same time, 
on the roads which run parallel with the stream. 
As one ascends the Merrimack, he rarely sees 
a village, but for the most part, alternate wood 
and pasture lands, and sometimes a field of corn 
or potatoes, of rye or oats or English grass, with 
a few straggling apple trees, and, at still longer 
intervals, a farmer's house. The soil, excepting 
the best of the interval, is commonly as light 
and sandy as a patriot could desire. Some- 
times, this forenoon, the country appeared in its 
primitive state, and as if the Indian still inhab- 
ited it; and again, as if many free new settlers 
occupied it, their slight fences straggling down 
to the water's edge, and the barking of dogs, 
and even the prattle of children, were heard, 
and smoke was seen to go up from some hearth- 
stone, and the banks were divided into patches 
of pasture, mowing, tillage, and woodland. But 
when the river spread out broader, with an unin- 
habited islet, or a long low sandy shore which 
ran on single and devious, not answering to its 
opposite, but far off as if it were seashore or 
single coast, and the land no longer nursed the 
river in its bosom, but they conversed as equals, 
the rustling leaves with rippling waves, and few 
fences were seen, but high oak woods on one 
side, and large herds of cattle, and all tracks 
seemed a point to one centre, behind some 




3 



w* *f&~ 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 241 

statelier grove, — we imagined that the river 
flowed through an extensive manor, and that 
the few inhabitants were retainers to a lord, and 
a feudal state of things prevailed. 

When there was a suitable reach, we caught 
sight of the Goffstown Mountain, the Indian 
Uncannunuc, rising before us on the west side. 
It was a calm and beautiful day, with only a 
slight zephyr to ripple the surface of the water, 
and rustle the woods on shore, and just warmth 
enough to prove the kindly disposition of Nature 
to her children. With buoyant spirits and 
vigorous impulses we tossed our boat rapidly 
along into the very middle of this forenoon. The 
fish-hawk sailed and screamed overhead. The 
chipping, or striped squirrel, sciurus striatus, 
sat upon the end of some Virginia fence or 
rider reaching over the stream, twirling a green 
nut with one paw, as in a lathe, while the other 
held it fast against its incisors as chisels. Like 
an independent russet leaf, with a will of its 
own, rustling whither it could; now under the 
fence, now over it, now peeping at the voy- 
ageurs through a crack with only its tail visi- 
ble, now at its lunch deep in the toothsome 
kernel, and now a rod off playing at hide-and- 
seek, with the nut stowed away in its chops, 
where were half a dozen more beside, extending 
its cheeks to a ludicrous breadth. As if it were 
devising through what safe valve of frisk or 



242 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

somerset to let its superfluous life escape; the 
stream passing harmlessly off, even while it 
sits, in constant electric flashes through its 
tail; and now with a chuckling squeak it dives 
into the root of a hazel, and we see no more of it. 
Or the larger red squirrel or chickaree, sometimes 
called the Hudson Bay squirrel, striurus Hud- 
sonius, gave warning of our approach by that 
peculiar alarum of his, like the winding up of 
some strong clock, in the top of a pine tree, 
and dodged behind its stem, or leaped from tree 
to tree, with such caution and adroitness as if 
much depended on the fidelity of his scout, 
running along the white pine boughs some- 
times twenty rods by our side, with such speed, 
and by such unerring routes as if it were some 
well-worn familiar path to him; and presently, 
when we have passed, he returns to his work of 
cutting off the pine cones, and letting them fall 
to the ground. 

We passed Cromwell's Falls, the first we met 
with on this river, this forenoon, by means of 
locks, without using our wheels. These falls 
are the Nesenkeag of the Indians. Great Nesen- 
keag Stream comes in on the right just above, 
and Little Nesenkeag some distance below, 
both in Litchfield. We read in the gazetteer, 
under the head of Merrimack, that " The first 
house in this town was erected on the margin 
of the river [soon after 1665] for a house of traffic 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 243 

with the Indians. For some time one Cromwell 
carried on a lucrative trade with them, weighing 
their furs with his foot, till, enraged at his sup- 
posed or real deception, they formed the resolu- 
tion to murder him. This intention being com- 
municated to Cromwell, he buried his wealth 
and made his escape. Within a few hours 
after his flight, a party of the Penacook tribe 
arrived, and not finding the object of their 
resentment, burnt his habitation." Upon the 
top of the high bank here, close to the river, was 
still to be seen his cellar, now overgrown with 
trees. It was a convenient spot for such a 
traffic, at the foot of the first falls above the 
settlements, and commanding a pleasant view 
up the river, where he could see the Indians 
coming down with their furs. The lock-man 
told us that his shovel and tongs had been 
plowed up here, and also a stone with his name 
on it. But we will not vouch for the truth of 
this story. These were the traces of the white 
trader. On the opposite bank, where it jutted 
over the stream cape-wise, we picked up four 
arrow-heads and a small Indian tool made of 
stone, as soon as we had climbed it, where plainly 
there had once stood a wigwam of the Indians 
with whom Cromwell traded, and who fished 
and hunted here before he came. 

As usual the gossips have not been silent 
respecting Cromwell's buried wealth, and it is 



244 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

said that some years ago a farmer's plow, not 
far from here, slid over a flat stone which emitted 
a hollow sound, and on its being raised a sum 
of money was found. The lock-man told us 
another similar story about a farmer in a neigh- 
boring town, who had been a poor man, but who 
suddenly bought a good farm, and was well to 
do in the world; and, when he was questioned, 
did not give a satisfactory account of the matter; 
— how few alas, could! This caused his hired 
man to remember, that one day as they were 
plowing together the plow struck something, 
and his employer going back to look, concluded 
not to go round again, saying that the sky look- 
ed rather louring, and so put up his team. The 
like urgency has caused many things to be re- 
membered which never transpired. The truth 
is, there is money buried everywhere, and you 
have only to go work to find it. 

Not far from these falls stands an oak tree on 
the interval, about a quarter of a mile from the 
river, on the farm of a Mr. Lund, which was 
pointed out to us as the spot where French, the 
leader of the party which went in pursuit of the 
Indians from Dunstable, was killed. Farwell 
dodged them in the thick woods near. It did 
not look as if men had ever had to run for their 
lives on this now open and peaceful interval. 

Here too was another extensive desert by 
the side of the road in Litchfield, visible from the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 245 

bank of the river. The sand was blown off in 
some places to the depth of ten or twelve feet, 
leaving small grotesque hillocks of that height 
where there was a clump of bushes firmly rooted. 
Thirty or forty years ago, as we were told, it 
was a sheep pasture, but the sheep being worried 
by the fleas, began to paw the ground, till they 
broke the sod, and so the sand began to blow, 
till now it had extended over forty or fifty acres. 
This evil might easily have been remedied at 
first, by spreading birches with their leaves on 
over the sand, and fastening them down with 
stakes, to break the wind. The flies bit the 
sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the 
sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing 
what a great sore a little scratch breedeth. Who 
knows but Sahara, where caravans and cities 
are buried, began with the bite of an African 
flea. This poor globe, how it must itch in many 
places! Will no god be kind enough to spread 
a salve of birches over its sores? — Here too we 
noticed where the Indians had gathered a heap 
of stones, perhaps for their council fire, which 
by their weight having prevented the sand under 
them from blowing away, were left on the sum- 
mit of a mound. They told us that arrow-heads, 
and also bullets of lead and iron, had been found 
here. We noticed several other sandy tracts 
in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack 
can be traced from the nearest mountain by its 



246 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

yellow sandbanks, though the river itself is 
for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we 
hear, have in some cases grown out of these 
causes. Railroads have been made through 
certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, 
and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has 
converted fertile farms into deserts, and the 
Company has had to pay the damages. 

This sand seemed to us the connecting link 
between land and water. It was a kind of water 
on which you could walk, and you could see the 
ripple marks on its surface, produced by the 
winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a 
brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans 
are permitted by the Koran to perform their 
ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, 
a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now 
understood the propriety of this provision. 

Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to 
whose formation, perhaps, these very banks 
have sent their contribution, is a similar desert 
of drifting sand, of various colors, blown into 
graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sand- 
bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to 
the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the 
inside, rarely more than half a mile wide. There 
are but half a dozen houses on it, and it is almost 
without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing 
with which a countryman is familiar. The 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 247 

thin vegetation stands half buried in sand, as 
in drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach 
plum, which gives the island its name, grows 
but a few feet high ; but this is so abundant that 
parties of a hundred at once come from the main 
land and down the Merrimack in September, 
and pitch their tents, and gather the plums, which 
are good to eat raw and to preserve. The grace- 
ful and delicate beach pea too grows abundantly 
amid the sand; and several strange moss-like 
and succulent plants. The island for its whole 
length is scolloped into low hills, not more than 
twenty feet high, by the wind, and excepting 
a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as track- 
less as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand 
and valleys plowed by the wind, where you might 
expect to discover the bones of a caravan. 
Schooners come from Boston to load with the 
sand for masons' uses, and in a few hours the 
wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet 
you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to 
come to fresh water; and you are surprised to 
learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes 
are found, though you see not where they can 
burrow or hide themselves. I have walked down 
the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, 
at which time alone you can find a firm ground 
to walk on, and probably Massachusetts does 
not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. 
On the sea side there are only a distant sail and 



US A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

a few coots to break the grand monotony. A 
solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill 
than usual, is remarkable as a land-mark for 
miles; while for music you hear only the cease- 
less sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of 
the beach birds. 

There were several canal boats at Cromwell's 
Falls, passing through the locks, for which we 
waited. In the forward part of one stood a 
brawny New Hampshire man, leaning on his 
pole, bareheaded and in shirt and trousers only, 
a rude Apollo of a man, coming down from that 
" vast uplandish country " to the main; of name- 
less age, with flaxen hair, and vigorous, weather- 
bleached countenance, in whose wrinkles the 
sun still lodged, as little touched by the heats 
and frosts and withering cares of life, as a moun- 
tain maple; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, 
with whom we parleyed a while, and parted not 
without a sincere interest in one another. His 
humanity was genuine and instinctive, and his 
rudeness only a manner. He inquired, just as 
we were passing out of earshot, if we had killed 
anything, and we shouted after him that we had 
shot a buoy, and could see him for a long while 
scratching his head in vain, to know if he had 
heard aright. 

There is reason in the distinction of civil and 
uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 249 

a rind, that we doubt whether they cover any- 
core or sap wood at all. We sometimes meet 
uncivil men, children of Amazons, who dwell 
by mountains paths, and are said to be inhos- 
pitable to strangers; whose salutation is as rude 
as the grasp of their brawny hands, and who 
deal with men as unceremoniously as they are 
wont to deal with the elements. They need 
only to extend their clearings, and let in more 
sunlight, to seek out the southern slopes of the 
hills, from which they may look down on the 
civil plain or ocean, and temper their diet duly 
with the cereal fruits, consuming less wild meat 
and acorns, to become like the inhabitants of 
cities. A true politeness does not result from 
any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, 
but grows naturally in characters of the right 
grain and quality, through a long fronting of 
men and events, and rubbing on good and bad 
fortune. Perhaps I can tell a tale to the pur- 
pose while the lock is filling, — for our voyage 
this forenoon furnishes but few incidents of 
importance. 

Early one summer morning I had left the 
shores of the Connecticut, and for the livelong 
day travelled up the bank of a river, which came 
in from the west; now looking down on the stream, 
foaming and rippling through the forest a mile 
off, from the hills over which the road led, and 



250 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

now sitting on its rocky brink and clipping my 
feet in its rapids, or bathing adventurously in 
mid-channel. The hills grew more and more 
frequent, and gradually swelled into mountains 
as I advanced, hemming in the course of the 
river, so that at last I could not see where it 
came from, and was at liberty to imagine the 
most wonderful meanderings and descents. At 
noon I slept on the grass in the shade of a maple, 
where the river had found a broader channel 
than usual, and was spread out shallow, with 
frequent sand-bars exposed. In the names of 
the towns I recognized some which I had long 
ago read on teamsters' wagons, that had come 
from far up country, quiet, uplandish towns, of 
mountainous fame. I walked along musing, 
and enchanted by rows of sugar-maples, through 
the small and uninquisitive villages, and some- 
times was pleased with the sight of a boat drawn 
up on a sand-bar, where there appeared no in- 
habitants to use it. It seemed, however, as 
essential to the river as a fish, and to lend a 
certain dignity to it. It was like the trout of 
mountain streams to the fishes of the sea, or 
like the young of the land crab born far in the 
interior, who have never yet heard the sound of 
the ocean's surf. The hills approached nearer 
and nearer to the stream, until at last they 
closed behind me, and I found myself, just before 
night-fall, in a romantic and retired valley, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 251 

about half a mile in length, and barely wide 
enough for the stream at its bottom. I thought 
that there could be no finer site for a cottage 
among mountains. You could anywhere run 
across the stream on the rocks, and its constant 
murmuring would quiet the passions of mankind 
forever. Suddenly the road, which seemed 
aiming for the mountain side, turned short to 
the left, and another valley opened, concealing 
the former, and of the same character with it. 
It was the most remarkable and pleasing scenery 
I had ever seen. I found here a few mild and 
hospitable inhabitants, who, as the day was not 
quite spent, and I was anxious to improve the 
light, directed me four or five miles further on 
my way to the dwelling of a man whose name 
was Rice, who occupied the last and highest of 
the valleys that lay in my path, and who, they 
said, was a rather rude and uncivil man. But, 
" What is a foreign country to those who have 
science? Who is a stranger to those who have 
the habit of speaking kindly? " 

At length, as the sun was setting behind the 
mountains in a still darker and more solitary 
vale, I reached the dwelling of this man. Except 
for the narrowness of the plain, and that the 
stones were solid granite, it was the counter- 
part of that retreat to which Belphcebe bore 
the wounded Timias; — 



252 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

" in a pleasant glade, 
With mountains round about environed, 
And mighty woods, which did the valley shade, 
And like a stately theatre it made, 
Spreading itself into a spacious plain; 
And in the midst a little river played 
Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain, 
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain." 

I observed, as I drew near, that he was not 
so rude as I had anticipated, for he kept many 
cattle, and dogs to watch them, and I saw where 
he had made maple sugar on the sides of the 
mountains, and above all distinguished the 
voices of children mingling with the murmur 
of the torrent before the door. As I passed 
his stable I met one whom I supposed to be a 
hired man, attending to his cattle, and inquired 
if they entertained travellers at that house. 
" Sometimes we do," he answered, gruffly, and 
immediately went to the farthest stall from me, 
and I perceived that it was Rice himself whom I 
had addressed. But pardoning this incivility 
to the wildness of the scenery, I bent my steps 
to the house. There was no sign-post before it, 
nor any of the usual invitations to the trav- 
eller, though I saw by the road that many went 
and came there, but the owner's name only was 
fastened to the outside, a sort of implied and 
sullen invitation, as I thought. I passed from 
room to room without meeting any one, till I 
came to what seemed the guests' apartment, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 253 

which was neat, and even had an air of refine- 
ment about it, and I was glad to find a map 
against the wall which would direct me on my 
journey on the morrow. At length I heard a 
step in a distant apartment, which was the first 
I had entered, and went to see if the landlord 
had come in; but it proved to be only a child, one 
of those whose voices I had heard, probably 
his son, and between him and me stood in the 
door-way a large watch-dog, which growled at 
me, and looked as if he would presently spring, 
but the boy did not speak to him; and when I 
asked for a glass of water, he briefly said, " It 
runs in the corner." So I took a mug from the 
counter and went out of doors, and searched 
round the corner of the house, but could find 
neither well nor spring, nor any water but the 
stream which ran all along the front. I came 
back, therefore, and setting down the mug, 
asked the child if the stream was good to drink; 
whereupon he seized the mug and going to the 
corner of the room, where a cool spring which 
issued from the mountain behind trickled through 
a pipe into the apartment, filled it, and drank 
and gave it to me empty again, and calling to 
the dog, rushed out of doors. Ere long some of 
the hired men made their appearance, and drank 
at the spring, and lazily washed themselves 
and combed their hair in silence, and some sat 
down as if weary, and fell asleep in their seats. 



254 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

But all the while I saw no women, though I 
sometimes heard a bustle in that part of the 
house from which the spring came. 

At length Rice himself came in, for it was now 
dark, with an ox whip in his hand, breathing 
hard, and he too soon settled down into his 
seat not far from me, as if now that his day's 
work was done he had no further to travel, but 
only to digest his supper at his leisure. When 
I asked him if he could give me a bed, he said 
there was one ready, in such a tone as implied 
that I ought to have known it, and the less said 
about that the better. So far so good. And 
yet he continued to look at me as if he would 
fain have me say something further like a trav- 
eller. I remarked, that it was a wild and rugged 
country he inhabited, and worth coming many 
miles to see. " Not so very rough neither," 
said he, and appealed to his men to bear witness 
to the breadth and smoothness of his fields, which 
consisted in all of one small interval, and to 
the size of his crops; " and if we have some hills," 
added he, "there's no better pasturage any- 
where." I then asked if this place was the one 
I had heard of, calling it by a name I had seen 
on the map, or if it was a certain other; and he 
answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one 
nor the other; that he had settled it and culti- 
vated it, and made it what it was, and I could 
know nothing about it. Observing some guns 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 255 

and other implements of hunting hanging on 
brackets around the room, and his hounds now 
sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to change 
the discourse, and inquired if there was much 
game in that country, and he answered this 
question more graciously, having some glim- 
mering of my drift; but when I inquired if there 
were any bears, he answered impatiently, that 
he was no more in danger of losing his sheep than 
his neighbors, he had tamed and civilized that 
region. After a pause, thinking of my journey 
on the morrow, and the few hours of daylight 
in that hollow and mountainous country which 
would require me to be on my way betimes, I 
remarked that the day must be shorter by an 
hour there than on the neighboring plains; at 
which he gruffly asked what I knew about it, 
and affirmed that he had as much daylight as his 
neighbors; he ventured to say the days were 
longer there than where I lived, as I should 
find if I stayed; that in some way, I could not 
be expected to understand how, the sun came 
over the mountains half an hour earlier, and 
stayed half an hour later there than on the neigh- 
boring plains. — And more of like sort he said. 
He was, indeed, as rude as a fabled satyr. But 
I suffered him to pass for what he was, for why 
should I quarrel with nature? and was even 
pleased at the discovery of such a singular natural 
phenomenon. I dealt with him as if to me all 



256 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

manners were indifferent, and he had a sweet 
wild way with him. I would not question 
Nature, and I would rather have him as he was, 
than as I would have him. For I had come up 
here not for sympathy, or kindness, or society, 
but for novelty and adventure, and to see what 
Nature had produced here. I therefore did not 
repel his rudeness, but quite innocently wel- 
comed it all, and knew how to appreciate it, 
as if I were reading in an old drama a part well 
sustained. He was indeed a coarse and sen- 
sual man, and, as I have said, uncivil, but he 
had his just quarrel with nature and mankind, 
I have no doubt, only he had no artificial cover- 
ing to his ill humors. He was earthy enough, but 
yet there was good soil in him, and even a long- 
suffering Saxon probity at bottom. If you 
could represent the case to him, he would not 
let the race die out in him, like a red Indian. 

At length I told him that he was a fortunate 
man, and I trusted that he was grateful for so 
much light, and rising, said I would take a lamp, 
and that I would pay him then for my lodging, 
for I expected to recommence my journey, even 
as early as the sun rose in his country; but he 
answered in haste, and this time civilly, that I 
should not fail to find some of his household 
stirring, however early, for they were no slug- 
gards, and I could take my breakfast with them 
before I started if I chose; and as he lighted the 




£ 



o 



^ 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 257 

lamp I detected a gleam of true hospitality and 
ancient civility, a beam of pure and even gentle 
humanity from his bleared and moist eyes. It 
was a look more intimate with me, and more 
explanatory, than any words of his could have 
been if he had tried to his dying day. It was 
more significant than any Rice of those parts 
could even comprehend, and long anticipated 
this man 's culture, — a glance of his pure gen- 
ius, which did not much enlighten him, but did 
impress and rule him for the moment, and faintly 
constrain his voice and manner. He cheer- 
fully led the way to my apartment, stepping 
over the limbs of his men who were asleep on the 
floor in an intervening chamber, and showed 
me a clean and comfortable bed. For many 
pleasant hours, after the household was asleep, 
I sat at the open window, for it was a sultry 
night, and heard the little river 

" Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain, 
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain." 

But I arose as usual by starlight the next morn- 
ing, before my host, or his men, or even his 
dogs, were awake; and having left a ninepence 
on the counter, was already half way over the 
mountain with the sun, before they had broken 
their fast. 

Before I had left the country of my host, 
while the first rays of the sun slanted over 



258 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the mountains, as I stopped by the wayside 
to gather some raspberries, a very old man, not 
far from a hundred, came along with a milking 
pail in his hand, and turning aside began to 
pluck the berries near me; — 

" his reverend locks 



In comelye curies did wave; 
And on his aged temples grew 
The blossoms of the grave." — 

But when I inquired the way, he answered in a 
low, rough voice, without looking up or seeming 
to regard my presence, which I imputed to his 
years; and presently, muttering to himself, 
he proceeded to collect his cows in a neighboring 
pasture; and when he had again returned near 
to the wayside, he suddenly stopped, while his 
cows went on before, and, uncovering his head, 
prayed aloud in the cool morning air, as if he 
had forgotten this exercise before, for his daily 
bread, and also that He who letteth his rain fall 
on the just and on the unjust, and without whom 
not a sparrow falleth to the ground, would not 
neglect the stranger (meaning me) , and with even 
more direct and personal applications, though 
mainly according to the long established formula 
common to lowlanders and the inhabitants of 
mountains. When he had done praying, I made 
bold to ask him if he had any cheese in his hut 
which he would sell me, but he answered without 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 259 

looking up, and in the same low and repulsive voice 
as before, that they did not make any, and went 
to milking. It is written, "The stranger who 
turneth away from a house with disappointed 
hopes, leaveth there his own offences, and de- 
parteth, taking with him all the good actions of 
the owner." 

Being now fairly in the stream of this week's 
commerce, we began to meet with boats more 
frequently, and hailed them from time to time 
with the freedom of sailors. The boatmen ap- 
peared to lead an easy and contented life, and 
we thought that we should prefer their employ- 
ment ourselves to many professions which are 
much more sought after. They suggested how 
few circumstances are necessary to the well- 
being and serenity of man, how indifferent all 
employments are, and that any may seem noble 
and poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with 
sufficient buoyancy and freedom. With liberty 
and pleasant weather, the simplest occupation, 
any unquestioned country mode of life which 
detains us in the open air, is alluring. The man 
who picks peas steadily for a living is more than 
respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn 
neighbors. We are as happy as the birds when 
our Good Genius permits us to pursue any out- 
door work without a sense of dissipation. Our 
pen-knife glitters in the sun; our voice is echoed 



260 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

by yonder wood; if an oar drops, we are fain to 
let it drop again. 

The canal boat is of very simple construction, 
requiring but little ship timber, and, as we were 
told, costs about two hundred dollars. They 
are managed by two men. In ascending the 
stream they use poles fourteen or fifteen feet 
long, shod with iron, walking about one third 
the length of the boat from the forward end. 
Going down, they commonly keep in the middle 
of the stream, using an oar at each end; or if 
the wind is favorable they raise their broad sail, 
and have only to steer. They commonly carry 
down bricks orwood, — fifteen or sixteen thousand 
bricks, and as many cords of wood, at a time, — 
and bring back stores for the country, consuming 
two or three days each way between Concord 
and Charlestown. They sometimes pile the 
wood so as to leave a shelter in one part where 
they may retire from the rain. One can hardly 
imagine a more healthful employment, or one 
more favorable to contemplation and the 
observation of nature. Unlike the mariner, 
they have the constantly varying panorama of 
the shore to relieve the monotony of their labor, 
and it seemed to us that as they thus glided 
noiselessly from town to town, with all their 
furniture about them, for their very homestead 
is a-movable, they could comment on the char- 
acter of the inhabitants with greater advantage 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 261 

and security to themselves than the traveller in 
a coach, who would be unable to indulge in such 
broadsides of wit and humor in so small a vessel, 
for fear of the recoil. They are not subject to 
great exposure, like the lumberers of Maine, 
in any weather, but inhale the healthfullest 
breezes, being slightly encumbered with cloth- 
ing, frequently with the head and feet bare. 
When we met them at noon as they were lei- 
surely descending the stream, their busy com- 
merce did not look like toil, but rather like some 
ancient oriental game still played on a large 
scale, as the game of chess, for instance, handed 
down to this generation. From morning till 
night, unless the wind is so fair that his single 
sail will suffice without other labor than steer- 
ing, the boatman walks backwards and forwards 
on the side of his boat, now stooping with his 
shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly 
to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily for- 
ward through an endless valley and an ever- 
changing scenery, now distinguishing his course 
for a mile or two, and now shut in by a sudden 
turn of the river in a small woodland lake. All the 
phenomena which surround him are simple and 
grand, and there is something impressive, even 
majestic, in the very motion he causes, which will 
naturally be communicated to his own character, 
and he feels the slow irresistible movement un- 
der him with pride, as if it were his own energy. 



262 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The news spread like wild fire among us youths, 
when formerly, once in a year or two, one of 
these boats came up the Concord River, and was 
seen stealing mysteriously through the meadows 
and past the village. It came and departed as 
silently as a cloud, without noise or dust, and 
was witnessed by few. One summer day this 
huge traveller might be seen moored at some 
meadow's wharf, and another summer day it 
was not there. Where precisely it came from, 
or who these men were who knew the rocks 
and soundings better than we who bathed there, 
we could never tell. We knew some river's 
bay only, but they took rivers from end to end. 
They were a sort of fabulous river-men to us. 
It was inconceivable by what sort of mediation 
any mere landsman could hold communication 
with them. Would they heave to to gratify his 
wishes? No, it was favor enough to know 
faintly of their destination, or the time of their 
possible return. I have seen them in the summer, 
when the stream ran low, mowing the weeds in 
mid-channel, and with hayers' jests cutting 
broad swathes in three feet of water, that they 
might make a passage for their scow, while 
the grass in long windrows was carried down the 
stream, undried by the rarest hay weather. We 
used to admire unweariedly how their vessel 
would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so many 
casks of lime, and thousands of bricks, and such 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 263 

heaps of iron ore, with wheel-barrows aboard, — 
and that when we stepped on it, it did not yield 
to the pressure of our feet. It gave us confidence 
in the prevalence of the law of buoyancy, and 
we imagined to what infinite uses it might be 
put. The men appeared to lead a kind of life 
on it, and it was whispered that they slept 
aboard. Some affirmed that it carried sail, and 
that such winds blew here as filled the sails 
of vessels on the ocean; which again others 
much doubted. They had been seen to sail 
across our Fair-Haven bay by lucky fishers who 
were out, but unfortunately others were not 
there to see. We might then say that our river 
was navigable, — why not? In after years I 
read in print, with no little satisfaction, that it 
was thought by some that with a little expense 
in removing rocks and deepening the channel, 
" there might be a profitable inland navigation." 
I then lived somewhere to tell of. 

Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa- 
nut and bread-fruit tree in the remotest isle, 
and sooner or later dawns on the duskiest and 
most simple-minded savage. If we may be par- 
doned the digression, — who can help being 
affected at the thought of the very fine and slight, 
but positive relation, in which the savage in- 
habitants of some remote isle stand to the myste- 
rious white mariner, the child of the sun? — As 
if we were to have dealings with an animal higher 



264 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

in the scale of being than ourselves. It is a 
barely recognized fact to the natives that he 
exists, and has his home far away somewhere, 
and is glad to buy their fresh fruits with his super- 
fluous commodities. Under the same catholic 
sun glances his white ship over Pacific waves 
into their smooth bays, and the poor savage's 
paddle gleams in the air. 

Man's little acts are grand, 
Beheld from land to land, 
There as they lie in time, 
Within their native clime. 

Ships with the noon-tide weigh, 

And glide before its ray, 

To some retired bay, 

Their haunt, 

Whence, under tropic sun, 

Again they run, 

Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant. 
For this was ocean meant, 
For this the sun was sent, 
And moon was lent, 
And winds in distant caverns pent. 

Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has 
been extended, and there is now but little boating 
on the Merrimack. All kinds of produce and 
stores were formerly conveyed by water, but 
now nothing is carried up the stream, and al- 
most wood and bricks alone are carried down, 
and these are also carried on the railroad. The 
locks are fast wearing out, and will soon be 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 265 

impassable, since the tolls will not pay the ex- 
pense of repairing them, and so in a few years 
there will be an end of boating on this river. 
The boating, at present, is principally between 
Merrimack and Lowell, or Hooksett and Man- 
chester. They make two or three trips from 
Merrimack to Lowell and back, about twenty- 
five miles each way, in a week, according to 
wind and weather. The boatman comes sing- 
ing in to shore late at night, and moors his 
empty boat, and gets his supper and lodging in 
some house near at hand, and again early in 
the morning, by starlight, perhaps, he pushes 
away up stream, and, by a shout, or the frag- 
ment of a song, gives notice of his approach to 
the lock-man, with whom he is to take his 
breakfast. If he gets up to his wood-pile before 
noon he proceeds to load his boat, with the help 
of his single "hand" and is on his way down 
again before night. When he gets to Lowell he 
unloads his boat, and gets his receipt for his 
cargo, and having heard the news at the public 
house at Middlesex or elsewhere, goes back 
with his empty boat and his receipt in his pocket 
to the owner, and to get a new load. We 
were frequently advertised of their approach 
by some faint sound behind us, and looking 
round saw them a mile off, creeping stealthily 
up the side of the stream like alligators. It was 
pleasant to hail these sailors of the Merrimack 



266 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

from time to time, and learn the news which 
circulated with them. We imagined that the 
sun shining on their bare heads had stamped 
a liberal and public character on their most 
private thoughts. 

The open and sunny interval still stretched 
away from the river, sometimes by two or more 
terraces, to the distant hill country, and when 
we climbed the bank we commonly found an 
irregular copse-wood skirting the river, the prim- 
itive having floated down stream long ago to 

the " King's navy. " Sometimes we saw the 

river road a quarter or half a mile distant, and 
the particolored Concord stage, with its cloud 
of dust, its van of earnest travelling faces, and 
its rear of dusty trunks, reminding us that the 
country had its places of rendezvous for rest- 
less Yankee men. There dwelt along at con- 
siderable distances on this interval a quiet 
agricultural and pastoral people, with every 
house its well, as we sometimes proved, and 
every household, though never so still and re- 
mote it appeared in the noontide, its dinner 
about these times. There they lived on, those 
New England people, farmer lives, father and 
grand-father and great-grandfather, on and on 
without noise, keeping up tradition, and expect- 
ing, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, 
we did not learn what. They were contented 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 267 

to live, since it was so contrived for them, and 
where their lines had fallen. — 

Our uninquiring corpses lie more low 
Than our life's curiosity doth go. 

Yet these men had no need to travel to be as 
wise as Solomon in all his glory, so similar are 
the lives of men in all countries, and fraught 
with the same homely experiences. One half 
the world knows how the other half lives. 

About noon we passed a small village in Mer- 
rimack at Thornton's Ferry, and tasted of the 
waters of Naticook Brook on the same side, 
where French and his companions, whose grave 
we saw in Dunstable, were ambuscaded by the 
Indians. The humble village of Litchfield, with 
its steepleless meeting-house, stood on the oppo- 
site or east bank, near where a dense grove of 
willows backed by maples skirted the shore. 
There also we noticed some shagbark trees, 
which, as they do not grow in Concord, were as 
strange a sight to us as the palm would be, whose 
fruit only we have seen. Our course now curved 
gracefully to the north, leaving a low flat shore 
on the Merrimack side, which forms a sort of 
harbor for canal boats. We observed some fair 
elms and particularly large and handsome white- 
maples standing conspicuously on this interval, 
and the opposite shore, a quarter of a mile 
below, was covered with young elms and maples 



268 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

six inches high, which had probably sprung 
from the seeds which had been washed across. 

Some carpenters were at work here mending 

a scow on the green and sloping bank. The 

strokes of their mallets echoed from shore to 

shore, and up and down the river, and their 

tools gleamed in the sun a quarter of a mile 

from us, and we realized that boat-building was 

as ancient and honorable an art as agriculture, 

and that there might be a naval as well as a 

pastoral life. The whole history of commerce 

was made manifest in that scow turned bottom 

upward on the shore. Thus did men begin to 

go down upon the sea in ships. We thought 

that it would be well for the traveller to build 

his boat on the bank of a stream, instead of 

finding a ferry or a bridge. In the Adventures 

of Henry the fur-trader, it is pleasant to read 

that when with his Indians he reached the shore 

of Ontario, they consumed two days in making 

two canoes of the bark of the elm tree, in which 

to transport themselves to Fort Niagara. It is 

a worthy incident in a journey, a delay as good 

as much rapid travelling. A good share of 

our interest in Xenophon's story of his retreat 

is in the manoeuvres to get the army safely over 

the rivers, whether on rafts of logs or fagots, 

or on sheep-skins blown up. And where could 

they better afford to tarry meanwhile than on 

the banks of a river? 




At Thornton's Ferry 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 269 

As we glided past at a distance, these outdoor 
workmen appeared to have added some dignity 
to their labor by its very publicness. It was 
a part of the industry of nature, like the work 
of hornets and mud-wasps. — 

The waves slowly beat, 
Just to keep the noon sweet, 
And no sound is floated o'er, 
Save the mallet on shore, 
Which echoing on high, 
Seems a-caulking the sky. 

The haze, the sun 's dust of travel, had a lethean 
influence on the land and its inhabitants, and 
all creatures resigned themselves to float upon 
the inappreciable tides of nature. 

Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze, 
Woven of Nature's richest stuffs, 
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea, 
Last conquest of the eye; 
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust, 
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth, 
Ethereal estuary, frith of light, 
Breakers of air, billows of heat, 
Fine summer spray on inland seas; 
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged, 
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned, 
From heath or stubble rising without song; 
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields. 

The routine which is in the sunshine and the 
finest days, as that which has conquered and 
prevailed, commends itself to us by its very 



270 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

antiquity and apparent solidity and necessity. 
Our weakness needs it, and our strength uses 
it. We cannot draw on our boots without brac- 
ing ourselves against it. If there were but one 
erect and solid standing tree in the woods, all 
creatures would go to rub against it and make 
sure of their footing. During the many hours 
which we spend in this waking sleep, the hand 
stands still on the face of the clock, and we 
grow like corn in the night. Men are as busy 
as the brooks or bees, and postpone everything 
to their busyness; as carpenters discuss poli- 
tics between the strokes of the hammer while 
they are shingling a roof. 

This noontide was a fit occasion to make 
some pleasant harbor, and there read the journal 
of some voyageur like ourselves, not too moral 
nor inquisitive, and which would not disturb 
the noon; or else some old classic, the very flower 
of all reading, which we had postponed to such 
a season 

M Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure." 

But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, 
contained only its well-thumbed Navigator for 
all literature, and we were obliged to draw on 
our memory for these things. We naturally 
remembered Alexander Henry's Adventures here 
as a sort of classic among books of American 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 271 

travel. It contains scenery and rough sketch- 
ing of men and incidents enough to inspire poets 
for many years, and to my fancy is as full of 
sounding names as any page of history, — Lake 
Winnipeg, Hudson's Bay, Ottaway, and por- 
tages innumerable; Chipeways, Gens de Terres, 
Les Pilleurs, The Weepers; with reminiscences 
of Hearne's journey, and the like; an immense 
and shaggy but sincere country summer and 
winter, adorned with chains of lakes and rivers, 
covered with snows, with hemlocks and fir trees. 
There is a naturalness, an unpretending and cold 
life in this traveller, as in a Canadian winter, 
what life was preserved through low tempera- 
tures and frontier dangers by furs within a 
stout heart. He has truth and moderation 
worthy of the father of history, which belong 
only to an intimate experience, and he does not 
defer too much to literature. The unlearned 
traveller may quote his single line from the poets 
with as good right as the scholar. He too may 
speak of the stars, for he sees them shoot per- 
haps when the astronomer does not. The good 
sense of this author is very conspicuous. He 
is a traveller who does not exaggerate, but 
writes for the information of his readers, for 
science and for history. His story is told with 
as much good faith and directness as if it were 
a report to his brother traders, or the Directors 
of the Hudson Bay Company, and is fitly dedi- 



272 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

cated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the 
argument to a great poem on the primitive state 
of the country and its inhabitants, and the reader 
imagines what in each case with the invocation 
of the Muse might be sung, and leaves off with 
suspended interest, as if the full account were 
to follow. In what school was this fur-trader 
educated? He seems to travel the immense 
snowy country with such purpose only as the 
reader who accompanies him, and to the latter 's 
imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily 
created to be the scene of his adventures. What 
is most interesting and valuable in it, however, 
is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, 
of Braddock, or the North West, which it 
furnishes; not the annals of the country, but 
the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever 
without date. When out of history the truth 
shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates 
like withered leaves. 

The Souhegan, or Crooked river, as some 
translate it, comes in from the west about a 
mile and a half above Thornton's Ferry. Bab- 
boosuck Brook empties into it near its mouth. 
There are said to be some of the finest water 
privileges in the country still unimproved on the 
former stream, at a short distance from the 
Merrimack. One spring morning, March 22, 
in the year 1677, an incident occurred on the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 273 

banks of the river here, which is interesting to 
us as a slight memorial of an interview between 
two ancient tribes of men, one of which is now 
extinct, while the other, though it is still repre- 
sented by a miserable remnant, has long since 
disappeared from its ancient hunting grounds. 
A Mr. James Parker at "Mr. Hinchmanne's 
farme ner Meremack," wrote thus "to the 
Honred Governer and Council at Bostown, 
Hast y Post Hast." 

" Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning 
to informe me, and then went to Mr. Tyng's 
to informe him, that his son being on ye other 
sid of Meremack river over against Souhegan 
upon the 22 day of this instant, about tene of 
the clock in the morning, he discovered 15 
Indians on this sid the river, which he soposed 
to be Mohokes by ther spech. He called to 
them; they answered, but he could not under- 
stand ther spech; and he having a conow ther 
in the river, he went to breck his conow that 
they might not have ani ues of it. In the mean 
time they shot about thirty guns at him, and 
he being much frighted fled, and come home 
forthwith to Nashamcock, [Pawtucket Falls or 
Lowell] wher ther wigowames now stand." 

Penacooks and Mohawks! ubique gentium 
sunt? Where are they now? — In the year 1670, 



274 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

a Mohawk warrior scalped a Naamkeak or 
Wamesit Indian maiden near where Lowell now 
stands. She, however, recovered. Even as late 
as 1685, John Hogkins, a Penacook Indian, who 
describes his grand-father as having lived " at 
place called Malamake rever, other name chef 
Natukkog and Panukkog, that one rever great 
many names," wrote thus to the governor: — 

" May 15th, 1685. 
"Honor governor my friend, — 

" You my friend I desire your worship and 
your power, because I hope you can do som great 
matters this one. I am poor and naked and I 
have no men at my place because I afraid all- 
way es Mohogs he will kill me every day and night. 
If your worship when please pray help me you 
no let Mohogs kill me at my place at Malamake 
river called Pannukkog and Natukkog, I will 
submit your worship and your power. — And 
now I want pouder and such alminishon shatt 
and guns, because I have forth at my horn and 
I plant theare. 

" This all Indian hand, but pray you do con- 
sider your humble servant, John Hogkins." 

Signed also by Simon Detogkom, King Hary, 
Sam Linis, Mr. Jorge Rodunnonukgus, John 
Owamosimmin, and nine other Indians, with 
their marks against their names. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 275 

But now, one hundred and fifty-four years 
having elapsed since the date of this letter, we 
went unalarmed on our way, without " brecking" 
our " conow," reading the New England Ga- 
zetteer, and seeing no traces of " Mohogs " on 
the banks. 

The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed 
to-day to have borrowed its character from the 
noon. 

Where gleaming fields of haze 
Meet the voyageur's gaze, 
And above, the heated air 
Seems to make a river there, 
The pines stand up with pride 
By the Souhegan 's side, 
And the hemlock and the larch 
With their triumphal arch 
Are waving o'er its march 

To the sea. 
No wind stirs its waves, 
But the spirits of the braves 

Hov'ring o'er, 
Whose antiquated graves 
Its still water laves 

On the shore. 
With an Indian's stealthy tread 
It goes sleeping in its bed, 
Without joy or grief, 
Or the rustle of a leaf, 
Without a ripple or a billow, 
Or the sigh of a willow, 
From the Lyndeboro' hills 
To the Merrimack mills. 
With a louder din 
Did its current begin, 



276 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

When melted the snow 

On the far mountain 's brow, 

And the drops came together 

In that rainy weather. 

Experienced river, 

Hast thou flowed forever? 

Souhegan soundeth old, 

But the half is not told, 

What names hast thou borne 

In the ages far gone, 

WTien the Xanthus and Meander 

Commenced to wander, 

Ere the black bear haunted 

Thy red forest-floor, 
Or Nature had planted 

The pines by thy shore. 

During the heat of the day, we rested on a 
large island a mile above the mouth of this river, 
pastured by a herd of cattle, with steep banks 
and scattered elms and oaks, and a sufficient 
channel for canal boats on each side. When 
we made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, 
the flames spreading amid the dry grass, and the 
smoke curling silently upward and casting gro- 
tesque shadows on the ground seemed phenom- 
ena of the noon, and we fancied that we pro- 
gressed up the stream without effort, and as 
naturally as the wind and tide went down, not 
outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle 
or impatience. The woods on the neighboring 
shore were alive with pigeons, which were mov- 
ing south looking for mast, but now, like our- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 277 

selves, spending their noon in the shade. We 
could hear the slight wiry winnowing sound of 
their wings as they changed their roosts from 
time to time, and their gentle and tremulous 
cooing. They sojourned with us during the 
noontide, greater travellers far than we. You 
may frequently discover a single pair sitting 
upon the lower branches of the white pine in 
the depths of the wood, at this hour of the day, 
so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit- 
like appearance, as if they had never strayed 
beyond its skirts, while the acorn which was 
gathered in the forests of Maine is still undi- 
gested in their crops. We obtained one of 
these handsome birds, which lingered too long 
upon its perch, and plucked and broiled it here 
with some other game, to be carried along for 
our supper; for beside the provisions which we 
carried with us, we depended mainly on the 
river and forest for our supply. It is true, it 
did not seem to be putting this bird to its right 
use, to pluck off its feathers, and extract its 
entrails, and broil its carcass on the coals; but 
we heroically persevered, nevertheless, waiting 
for farther information. The same regard for 
Nature which excited our sympathy for her 
creatures, nerved our hands to carry through 
what we had begun. For we would be honorable 
to the party we deserted; we would fulfil fate, 
and so at length, perhaps, detect the secret 



278 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

innocence of these incessant tragedies which 
Heaven allows. — 

" Too quick resolves do resolution wrong, 
What, part so soon to be divorced so long? 
Things to be done are long to be debated; 
Heaven is not day'd, Repentance is not dated." 

We are double-edged blades, and every time we 
whet our virtue the return stroke straps our 
vice. WTiere is the skilful swordsman who 
can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work 
with the other edge? 

Nature herself has not provided the most 
graceful end for her creatures. What becomes 
of all these birds that people the air and forest 
for our solacement? The sparrows seem always 
chipper, never infirm. We do not see their 
bodies lie about; yet there is a tragedy at the 
end of each one of their lives. They must 
perish miserably; not one of them is translated. 
True, " not a sparrow falleth to the ground with- 
out our Heavenly Father's knowledge," but 
they do fall, nevertheless. 

The carcasses of some poor squirrels, however, 
the same that frisked so merrily in the morning, 
which we had skinned and embowelled for our 
dinner, we abandoned in disgust, with tardy 
humanity, as too wretched a resource for any 
but starving men. It was to perpetuate the 
practice of a barbarous era. If they had been 




The mouth of Nanticook Brook 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 279 

larger, our crime had been less. Their small 
red bodies, little bundles of red tissue, mere 
gobbets of venison, would not have " fattened 
fire." With a sudden impulse we threw them 
away, and washed our hands, and boiled some 
rice for our dinner. " Behold the difference 
between the one who eateth flesh, and him to 
whom it belonged! The first hath a monentary 
enjoyment, whilst the latter is deprived of exis- 
tence! " — " Who could commit so great a crime 
against a poor animal, who is fed only by the 
herbs which grow wild in the woods, and whose 
belly is burnt up with hunger? " We remem- 
bered a picture of mankind in the hunter age, 
chasing hares down the mountains, O me miser- 
able! Yet sheep and oxen are but larger squir- 
rels, whose hides are saved and meat is salted, 
whose souls perchance are not so large in pro- 
portion to their bodies. 

There should always be some flowering and 
maturing of the fruits of nature in the cooking 
process. Some simple dishes recommend them- 
selves to our imaginations as well as palates. 
In parched corn, for instance, there is a mani- 
fest sympathy between the bursting seed and 
the more perfect developments of vegetable 
life. It is a perfect flower with its petals, like 
the houstonia or anemone. On my warm 
hearth these cerealian blossoms expanded; here 
is the bank whereon they grew. Perhaps some 



280 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

such visible blessing would always attend the 
simple and wholesome repast. 

Here was that " pleasant harbor " which we 
had sighed for, where the weary voyageur 
could read the journal of some other sailor, whose 
bark had plowed, perchance, more famous and 
classic seas. At the tables of the gods, after 
feasting follow music and song; we will recline 
now under these island trees, and for our minstrel 
call on 

ANACREON 

" Nor has he ceased his charming song, but still that lyre, 
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades." 

Simonides' Epigram on Anacreon. 

I lately met with an old volume from a London 
bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and 
it was a pleasure to read once more only the words, 

— Orpheus, — Linus, — Musseus, — those faint 
poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away 
on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly 
more substantial sounds, Mimnermus — Ibycus 

— Alcseus — Stesichorus — Menander. They 
lived not in vain. We can converse with these 
bodiless fames without reserve or personality. 

I know of no studies so composing as those of 
the classical scholar. When we have sat down 
to them, life seems as still and serene as if it 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 281 

were very far off, and I believe it is not habitu- 
ally seen from any common platform so truly 
and unexaggerated as in the light of literature. 
In serene hours we contemplate the tour of the 
Greek and Latin authors with more pleasure 
than the traveller does the fairest scenery of 
Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more re- 
fined society? That highway down from Homer 
and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more 
attractive than the Appian. Reading the class- 
ics, or conversing with those old Greeks and 
Latins in their surviving works, is like walking 
amid the stars and constellations, a high and by 
way serene to travel. Indeed, the true scholar 
will be not a little of an astronomer in his habits. 
Distracting cares will not be allowed to obstruct 
the field of his vision, for the higher regions of 
literature, like astronomy, are above storm and 
darkness. 

But passing by these rumors of bards, let us 
pause for a moment at the Teian poet. 

There is something strangely modern about 
him. He is very easily turned into English. 
Is it that our lyric poets have resounded only 
that lyre, which would sound only light subjects, 
and which Simonides tells us does not sleep in 
Hades? His odes are like gems of pure ivory. 
They possess an ethereal and evanescent beauty 
like summer evenings, o ^p-q ere voeiv voov avdei, 
which you must perceive with the flower of the 



282 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

mind, — and show how slight a beauty could be 
expressed. You have to consider them, as the 
stars of lesser magnitude, with the side of the 
eye, and look aside from them to behold them. 
They charm us by their serenity and freedom 
from exaggeration and passion, and by a certain 
flowerlike beauty, which does not propose it- 
self, but must be approached and studied like 
a natural object. But perhaps their chief merit 
consists in the lightness and yet security of their 
tread; 

" The young and tender stalk 
Ne'er bends when they do walk." 

True, our nerves are never strung by them ; — 
it is too constantly the sound of the lyre, and 
never the note of the trumpet; but they are not 
gross, as has been presumed, but always ele- 
vated above the sensual. 

Perhaps these are the best that have come 
down to us. 

ON HIS LYRE 

I wish to sing the Atridae, 
And Cadmus I wish to sing; 
But my lyre sounds 
Only love with its chords. 
Lately I changed the strings 
And all the lyre; 
And I began to sing the labors 
Of Hercules; but my lyre 
Resounded loves. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 283 

Farewell, henceforth, for me, 
Heroes, for my lyre 
Sings only loves. 



TO A SWALLOW 

Thou indeed, dear swallow, 
Yearly going and coming, 
In summer weavest thy nest, 
And in winter go 'st disappearing 
Either to Nile or to Memphis. 
But Love always weaveth 
His nest in my heart.*** 



ON A SILVER CUP 

Turning the silver, 

Vulcan, make for me, 

Not indeed a panoply, 

For what are battles to me? 

But a hollow cup, 

As deep as thou canst. 

And make for me in it 

Neither stars, nor wagons, 

Nor sad Orion; 

What are the Pleiades to me? 

What the shining Bootes? 

Make vines for me, 

And clusters of grapes in it, 

And of gold Love and Bathyllus 

Treading the grapes 

With the fair Lyaeus. 



ON HIMSELF 

Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes 
And he the battles of Troy, 



284 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

But I of my own defeats. 
No horse have wasted me, 
Nor foot, nor ships; 
But a new and different host, 
From eyes smiting me. 



TO A DOVE 

Lovely dove, 

Whence, whence dost thou fly? 

Whence, running on air, 

Dost thou waft and diffuse 

So many sweet ointments? 

Who art? What thy errand? — 

Anacreon sent me 

To a boy, to Bathyllus, 

Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all. 

Cythere has sold me 

For one little song, 

And I'm doing this service 

For Anacreon. 

And now, as you see, 

I bear letters from him. 

And he says that directly 

He'll make me free, 

But though he release me, 

His slave I will tarry with him. 

For why should I fly 

Over mountains and fields, 

And perch upon trees, 

Eating some wild thing? 

Now indeed I eat bread, 

Plucking it from the hands 

Of Anacreon himself; 

And he gives me to drink 

The wine which he tastes, 

And drinking, I dance, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 285 

And shadow my master's 

Face with my wings; 

And, going to rest, 

On the lyre itself I sleep. 

That is all; get thee gone. 

Thou hast made me more talkative, 

Man, than a crow. 



ON LOVE 

Love walking swiftly, 

With hyacinthine staff, 

Bade me to take a run with him; 

And hastening through swift torrents, 

And woody places, and over precipices, 

A water-snake stung me. 

And my heart leaped up to 

My mouth, and I should have fainted; 

But Love fanning my brows 

With his soft wings, said, 

Surely, thou art not able to love. 



ON WOMEN 

Nature has given horns 

To bulls, and hoofs to horses, 

Swiftness to hares, 

To lions yawning teeth, 

To fishes swimming, 

To birds flight, 

To men wisdom. 

For woman she had nothing beside; 

What then does she give? Beauty, 

Instead of all shields, 

Instead of all spears; 

And she conquers even iron 

And fire, who is beautiful. 



286 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

• ON LOVERS 

Horses have the mark 

Of fire on their sides, 

And some have distinguished 

The Parthian men by their crests; 

So I, seeing lovers, 

Know them at once, 

For they have a certain slight 

Brand on their hearts. 



TO A SWALLOW 

What dost thou wish me to do to thee 

What, thou loquacious swallow? 

Dost thou wish me taking thee 

Thy light pinions to clip? 

Or rather to pluck out 

Thy tongue from within, 

As that Tereus did ? 

Why with thy notes in the dawn 

Hast thou plundered Bathyllus 

From my beautiful dreams? 



TO A COLT 

Thracian colt, why at me 
Looking aslant with thy eyes, 
Dost thou cruelly flee, 
And think that I know nothing wise? 
Know I could well 
Put the bridle on thee, 
And holding the reins, turn 
Round the bounds of the course. 
But now thou browsest the meads, 
And gambolling lightly dost play, 
For thou hast no skillful horseman 
Mounted upon thy back. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 287 

CUPID WOUNDED 

Love once among roses 

Saw not, 

A sleeping bee, but was stung; 

And being wounded in the finger 

Of his hand, cried for pain. 

Running as well as flying 

To the beautiful Venus, 

I am killed, mother, said he, 

I am killed, and I die. 

A little serpent has stung me, 

Winged, which they call 

A bee — the husbandmen. 

And she said, If the sting 

Of a bee afflicts you, 

How, think you, are they afflicted, 

Love, whom you smite? 

Late in the afternoon, for we had lingered 
long on the island, we raised our sail for the first 
time, and for a short hour the south-west wind 
was our ally; but it did not please Heaven to 
abet us long. With one sail raised we swept 
slowly up the eastern side of the stream, steer- 
ing clear of the rocks, while from the top of a 
hill which formed the opposite bank, some lum- 
berers were rolling down timber to be rafted 
down the stream. We could see their axes and 
levers gleaming in the sun, and the logs came 
down with a dust and a rumbling sound, which 
was reverberated through the woods beyond 
us on our side, like the roar of artillery. But 
Zephyr soon took us mit of sight and hearing of 



288 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

this commerce. Having passed Read's Ferry, 
and another island called McGaw's Island, we 
reached some rapids called Moore's Falls, and 
entered on " that section of the river, nine miles 
in extent, converted, by law, into the Union 
Canal, comprehending in that space six distinct 
falls; at each of which, and at several interme- 
diate places, work has been done." After pass- 
ing Moore's Falls by means of locks, we again 
had recourse to our oars, and went merrily on 
our way, driving the small sand-piper from rock 
to rock before us, and sometimes rowing near 
enough to a cottage on the bank, though they 
were few and far between, to see the sun-flowers, 
and the seed vessels of the poppy, like small 
goblets filled with the water of Lethe, before 
the door, but without disturbing the sluggish 
household behind. Thus we held on, sailing 
or dipping our way along with the paddle up this 
broad river, — smooth and placid, flowing over 
concealed rocks, where we could see the pickerel 
lying low in the transparent water, — eager to 
double some distant cape, to make some great 
bend as in the life of man, and see what new 
perspective would open; looking far into a new 
country, broad and serene, the cottages of sett- 
lers seen afar for the first time, yet with the moss 
of a century on their roofs, and the third or 
fourth generation in their shadow. Strange was 
it to consider how the sun and the summer, the 




Moore'' s Falls 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 289 

buds of spring and the seared leaves of autumn, 
were related to these cabins along the shore; 
how all the rays which paint the landscape 
radiate from them, and the flight of the crow 
and the gyrations of the hawk have reference 
to their roofs. Still the ever rich and fertile 
shores accompanied us, fringed with vines and 
alive with small birds and frisking squirrels, 
the edge of some farmer's field or widow's 
wood-lot; or wilder, perchance, where the musk- 
rat, the little medicine of the river, drags it- 
self along stealthily over the alder leaves and 
mussel shells, and man and the memory of man 
are banished far. 

At length the unwearied, never sinking shore, 
still holding on without break, with its cool 
copses and serene pasture grounds, tempted 
us to disembark; and we adventurously landed 
on this remote coast, to survey it, unknown to 
any human inhabitant probably to this day. 
But we still remember the gnarled and hospit- 
able oaks which grew even there for our enter- 
tainment, and were no strangers to us, the lonely 
horse in his pasture, and the patient cows, whose 
path to the river, so judiciously chosen to over- 
come the difficulties of the way, we followed, 
and disturbed their ruminations in the shade; 
and, above all, the cool free aspect of the wild 
apple trees, generously proffering their fruit 
to us, though still green and crude, the hard, 



290 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was 
not poison, but New English too, brought 
hither its ancestors by ours once. These gentler 
trees imparted a half -civilized and twilight aspect 
to the otherwise barbarian land. Still further 
on we scrambled up the rocky channel of a 
brook, which had long served nature for a sluice 
there, leaping like it from rock to rock through 
tangled woods, at the bottom of a ravine, which 
grew darker and darker, and more and more 
hoarse the murmurs of the stream, until we 
reached the ruins of a mill, where now the ivy 
grew, and the trout glanced through the crumb- 
ling flume; and there we imagined what had 
been the dreams and speculations of some early 
settler. But the waning day compelled us to 
embark once more, and redeem this wasted time 
with long and vigorous sweeps over the rippling 
stream. 

It was still wild and solitary, except that at 
intervals of a mile or two the roof of a cottage 
might be seen over the bank. This region, as 
we read, was once famous for the manufacture 
of straw bonnets of the Leghorn kind, of which 
it claims the invention in these parts, and oc- 
casionally some industrious damsel tripped down 
to the water's edge, as it appeared, to put her 
straw a-soak, and stood awhile to watch the 
retreating voyageurs, and catch the fragment of 
a boat song which we had made wafted over the 
water. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 291 

Thus, perchance, the Indian hunter, 

Many a lagging year agone, 
Gliding o'er thy rippling waters , 

Lowly hummed a natural song. 

Now the sun's behind the willows, 
Now he gleams along the waves, 

Faintly o'er the wearied billows 
Come the spirits of the braves. 

Just before sundown we reached some more 
falls in the town of Bedford, where some stone- 
masons were employed repairing the locks in a 
solitary part of the river. They were interested 
in our adventures, especially one young man of 
our own age, who inquired at first if we were 
bound up to "Skeag," and when he had heard 
our story, and examined our outfit, asked us 
other questions, but temperately still, and always 
turning to his work again, though as if it were 
become his duty. It was plain that he would 
like to go with us, and as he looked up the river, 
many a distant cape and wooded shore were 
reflected in his eye, as well as in his thoughts. 
When we were ready he left his work, and helped 
us through the locks with a sort of quiet enthu- 
siasm, telling us we were at Coos Falls, and we 
could still distinguish the strokes of his chisel 
for many sweeps after we had left him. 

We wished to camp this night on a large rock 
iin the middle of the stream, just above these 
:falls f but ihe want of fuel, and the difficulty of 



292 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

fixing our tent firmly, prevented us; so we made 
our bed on the main land opposite, on the west 
bank, in the town of Bedford, in a retired 
place, as we supposed, there being no house in 
sight. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 293 



WEDNESDAY 

" Man is man's foe and destiny." 

— Cotton 

EARLY this morning, as we were rolling up 
our buffaloes and loading our boat amid 
the dew, while our embers were still smok- 
ing, the masons who worked at the locks, and 
whom we had seen crossing the river in their 
boat the evening before while we were exam- 
ining the rock, came upon us as they were going 
to their work, and we found that we had pitched 
our tent directly in their path to their boat. 
This was the only time that we were observed 
on our camping ground. Thus, far from the 
beaten highways and the dust and din of travel, 
we beheld the country privately, yet freely, and 
at our leisure. Other roads do some violence 
to Nature, and bring the traveller to stare at 
her, but the river steals into the scenery it trav- 
erses without intrusion, silently creating and 
adoring it, and is as free to come and go as the 
zephyr. 

As we shoved away from this rocky coast, be- 
fore sunrise, the smaller bittern, the genius of the 
shore, was moping along its edge, or stood pro- 



294 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

bing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on us, 
though so demurely at work, or else he ran along 
over the wet stones like a wrecker in his storm 
coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and cockles. 
Now away he goes, with a limping flight, un- 
certain where he will alight, until a rod of clear 
sand amid the alders invites his feet; and now 
our steady approach compels him to seek a new 
retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian 
school, and no doubt believes in the priority of 
water to the other elements; the relic of a twi- 
light ante-diluvian age which yet inhabits these 
bright American rivers with us Yankees. There 
is something venerable in this melancholy and 
contemplative race of birds, which may have 
trodden the earth while it was yet in a slimy and 
imperfect state. Perchance their tracks too are 
still visible on the stones. It still lingers into 
our glaring summers, bravely supporting its fate 
without sympathy from man, as if it looked 
forward to some second advent of which he has 
no assurance. One wonders if, by its patient 
study by rocks and sandy capes, it has wrested 
the whole of her secret from Nature yet. What 
a rich experience it must have gained, standing 
on one leg and looking out from its dull eye so 
long on sunshine and rain, moon and stars! 
What could it tell of stagnant pools and reeds 
and dank night-fogs? It would be worth the 
while to look closely into the eye which has been 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 295 

open and seeing at such hours, and in such 
solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Me- 
thinks my own soul must be a bright invisible 
green. I have seen these birds stand by the 
half dozen together in the shallower water along 
the shore, with their bills thrust into the mud at 
the bottom, probing for food, the whole head 
being concealed, while the neck and body formed 
an arch above the water. 

Cohass Brook, the outlet of Massabesic Pond, 
— which last is five or six miles distant, and con- 
tains fifteen hundred acres, being the largest 
body of fresh water in Rockingham county, — 
comes in near here from the east. Rowing be- 
tween Manchester and Bedford, we passed, at 
an early hour, a ferry and some falls, called 
Goff's Falls, the Indian Cohasset, where there 
is a small village, and a handsome green islet 
in the middle of the stream. From Bedford 
and Merrimac have been boated the bricks of 
which Lowell is made. About twenty years 
before, as they told us, one Moore, of Bedford, 
having clay on his farm, contracted to furnish 
eight millions of bricks to the founders of that 
city within two years. He fulfilled his contract 
in one year, and since then bricks have been 
the principal export from these towns. The 
farmers found thus a market for their wood, and 
when they had brought a load to the kilns, they 
could cart a load of bricks to the shore, and so 



296 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

make a profitable day's work of it. Thus all 
parties were benefited. It was worth the while 
to see the place where Lowell was " dug out. " 
So likewise Manchester is being built of bricks 
made still higher up the river at Hooksett. 

There might be seen here on the bank of the 
Merrimack, near Goff 's Falls, in what is now the 
town of Bedford, famous " for hops and for its 
fine domestic manufactures," some graves of 
the aborigines. The land still bears this scar 
here, and time is slowly crumbling the bones of 
a race. Yet without fail every spring since they 
first fished and hunted here, the brown thrasher 
has heralded the morning from a birch or alder 
spray, and the undying race of reed-birds still 
rustles through the withering grass. But these 
bones rustle not. These mouldering elements 
are slowly preparing for another metamorphosis, 
to serve new masters, and what was the Indian 's 
will ere long be the white man's sinew. 

We learned that Bedford was not so famous 
for hops as formerly, since the price is fluctuating, 
and poles are now scarce. Yet if the traveller 
goes back a few miles from the river, the hop kilns 
will still excite his curiosity. 

There were few incidents in our voyage this 
forenoon, though the river was now more rocky 
and the falls more frequent than before. It was 
a pleasant change, after rowing incessantly for 
many hours, to lock ourselves through in some 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 297 

retired place, — for commonly there was no lock- 
man at hand, — one sitting in the boat, while 
the other, sometimes with no little labor and 
heave-yoing, opened and shut the gates, waiting 
patiently to see the locks fill. We did not once 
use the wheels which we had provided. Taking 
advantage of the eddy, we were sometimes 
floated up to the locks almost in the face of the 
falls; and, by the same cause, any floating timber 
was carried round in a circle and repeatedly 
drawn into the rapids before it finally went 
down the stream. These old gray structures, 
with their quiet arms stretched over the river 
in the sun, appeared like natural objects in the 
scenery, and the king-fisher and sand-piper 
alighted on them as readily as on stakes or rocks. 
We rowed leisurely up the stream for several 
hours, until the sun had got high in the sky, our 
thoughts monotonously beating time to our oars. 
For outward variety there was only the river 
and the receding shores, a vista continually 
opening behind and closing before us, as we sat 
with our backs up stream, and for inward such 
thoughts as the muses grudgingly lent us. We 
were always passing some low inviting shore or 
some overhanging bank, on which, however, we 
never landed. — 

Such near aspects had we 
Of our life's scenery. 



298 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

It might be seen by what tenure men held the 
earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, 
a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men 
may steer by their farm bounds and cottage 
lights. For my own part, but for the geogra- 
phers, I should hardly have known how large 
a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly 
passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have some- 
times ventured as far as to the mouth of my 
Snug Harbor. From an old ruined fort on Staten 
Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel 
whose name I had read in the morning through 
the telegraph glass, when she first came upon the 
coast, and her hull heaved up and glistened in 
the sun, from the moment when the pilot and 
most adventurous news-boats met her, past 
the Hook, and up the narrow channel of the wide 
outer bay, till she was boarded by the health 
officer, and took her station at Quarantine, or 
held on her unquestioned course to the wharves 
of New York. It was interesting, too, to watch 
the less adventurous news-man, who made 
his assault as the vessel swept through the Nar- 
rows, defying plague and quarantine law, and 
fastening his little cock boat to her huge side, 
clambered up and disappeared in the cabin. 
And then I could imagine what momentous 
news was being imparted by the captain, which 
no American ear had ever heard, that Asia, 
Africa, Europe — were all sunk; for which at 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 299 

length he pays the price, and is seen descending 
the ship's side with his bundle of newspapers, 
but not where he first got up, for these arrivers 
do not stand still to gossip, — and he hastes away 
with steady sweeps to dispose of his wares to 
the highest bidder, and we shall erelong read 
something startling, — "By the latest arrival," — 

" by the good ship ." — On Sunday I beheld 

from some interior hill the long procession of 
vessels getting to sea, reaching from the city 
wharves through the Narrows, and past the 
Hook, quite to the ocean-stream, far as the eye 
could reach, with stately march and silken sails, 
all counting on lucky voyages, but each time 
some of the number, no doubt, destined to go to 
Davy's locker, and never come on this coast 
again. — And again, in the evening of a pleasant 
day, it was my amusement to count the sails 
in sight. Rut as the setting sun continually 
brought more and more to light, still further in 
the horizon, the last count always had the advan- 
tage, till by the time the last rays streamed over 
the sea, I had doubled and trebled my first 
number; though I could no longer class them all 
under the several heads of ships, barques, brigs, 
schooners, and sloops, but most were faint generic 
vessels only. And then the temperate twilight 
light, perchance, revealed the floating home of 
some sailor whose thoughts were already alien- 
ated from this American coast, and directed to- 



300 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

wards the Europe of our dreams. — I have stood 
upon the same hill-top when a thunder shower 
rolling down from the Catskills and Highlands 
passed over the island, deluging the land, and 
when it had suddenly left us in sunshine, have 
seen it overtake successively with its huge 
shadow and dark descending wall of rain the 
vessels in the bay. Their bright sails were 
suddenly drooping and dark like the sides of 
barns, and they seemed to shrink before the 
storm; while still far beyond them on the sea, 
through this dark veil, gleamed the sunny sails 
of those vessels which the storm had not yet 
reached. — And at midnight, when all around 
and overhead was darkness, I have seen a field 
of trembling silvery light far out on the sea, the 
reflection of the moonlight from the ocean, as 
if beyond the precincts of our night, where the 
moon traversed a cloudless heaven, — and some- 
times a dark speck in its midst, where some for- 
tunate vessel was pursuing its happy voyage 
by night. 

But to us river sailors the sun never rose out 
of ocean waves, but from some green coppice, 
and went down behind some dark mountain 
line. We, too, were but dwellers on the shore, 
like the bittern of the morning, and our pursuit 
the wrecks of snails and cockles. Neverthe- 
less, we were contented to know the better one 
fair particular shore. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 301 

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, 

As near the ocean's edge as I can go, 
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach, 

Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. 

My sole employment 'tis, and scrupulous care, 
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides, 

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, 
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides. 

I have but few companions on the shore, 

They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea, 

Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, 
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view, 

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 

And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. 

The small houses which were scattered along 
the river at intervals of a mile or more, were 
commonly out of sight to us, but sometimes 
when we rowed near the shore, we heard the 
peevish note of a hen, or some slight domestic 
sound, which betrayed them. The lock-men's 
houses were particularly well placed, retired, 
and high, always at falls or rapids, and command- 
ing the pleasantest reaches of the river, — for 
it is generally wider and more lake-like just 
above a fall, — and there they wait for boats. 
These humble dwellings, homely and sincere, 
in which a hearth was still the essential part, 
were more pleasing to our eyes than palaces 
or castles would have been. In the noon of 



302 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

these days, as we have said, we occasionally 
climbed the banks and approached these houses, 
to get a glass of water and make acquaintance 
with their inhabitants. High in the leafy 
bank, surrounded commonly by a small patch 
of corn and beans, squashes and melons, with 
sometimes a graceful hop-yard on one side, and 
some running vine over the windows, they ap- 
peared like bee-hives set to gather honey for 
a summer. I have not read of any Arcadian 
life which surpasses the actual luxury and seren- 
ity of these New England dwellings. For the 
outward gilding, at least, the age is golden enough. 
As you approach the sunny door-way, awaken- 
ing the echoes by your steps, still no sound from 
these barracks of repose, and you fear that the 
gentlest knock may seem rude to the oriental 
dreamers. The door is opened, perchance, by 
some Yankee-Hindoo woman, whose small- 
voiced but sincere hospitality, out of the bottom- 
less depths of a quiet nature, has travelled quite 
round to the opposite side, and fears only to 
obtrude its kindness. You step over the white- 
scoured floor to the bright " dresser," lightly, 
as if afraid to disturb the devotions of the house- 
hold, — for oriental dynasties appear to have 
passed away since the dinner table was last 
spread here, — and thence to the frequented 
curb, where you see your long-forgotten, un- 
shaven face at the bottom, in juxtaposition 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 303 

with new-made butter and the trout in the well. 
"Perhaps you would like some molasses and 
ginger," suggests the faint noon voice. Some- 
times there sits the brother who follows the 
sea, their representative man; who knows only 
how far it is to the nearest port, no more dis- 
tances, all the rest is sea and distant capes, — 
patting the dog, or dandling the kitten in arms 
that were stretched by the cable and the oar, 
pulling against Boreas or the trade-winds. He 
looks up at the stranger, half pleased, half 
astonished, with a mariner's eye, as if he were 
a dolphin within cast. If men will believe it, 
sua si bona nbrint there are no more quiet Tem- 
pes, nor more poetic and Arcadian lives, than 
may be lived in these New England dwellings. 
We thought that the employment of their in- 
habitants by day would be to tend the flowers 
and herds, and at night, like the shepherds of 
old, to cluster and give names to the stars from 
the river banks. 

We passed a large and densely wooded island 
this forenoon, between Short's and Griffith's 
Falls, the fairest which we had met with, with 
a handsome grove of elms at its head. If it 
had been evening we should have been glad 
to camp there. Not long after one or two more 
occurred. The boatmen told us that the current 
had recently made important changes here. 
An island always pleases my imagination, even 



304 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the smallest, as a small continent and integral 
portion of the globe. I have a fancy for build- 
ing my hut on one. Even a bare grassy isle 
which I can see entirely over at a glance, has 
some undefined and mysterious charm for me. 
It is commonly the offspring of the junction of 
two rivers, whose currents bring down and de- 
posit their respective sands in the eddy at their 
confluence, as it were the womb of a continent. 
By what a delicate and far-fetched contribution 
every island is made! What an enterprise of 
Nature thus to lay the foundations of and to 
build up the future continent, of golden and 
silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant- 
like industry! Pindar gives the following ac- 
count of the origin of Thera, whence, in after 
times, Libyan Cyrene was settled by Battus. 
Triton, in the form of Eurypylus, presents a 
clod to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as 
they are about to return home. — 

" He knew of our haste, 
And immediately seizing a clod 
With his right hand, strove to give it 
As a chance stranger's gift. 

Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore, 
Stretching hand to hand, 
Received the mystic clod. 
But I hear it sinking from the deck, 
Go with the sea brine 
At evening, accompanying the watery sea. 
Often indeed I urged the careless 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 305 

Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot. 

And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya 

Is spilled before its hour." 

It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, 
how Helius, or the Sun, looked down into the 
sea one day, — when perchance his rays were 
first reflected from some increasing glittering 
sand-bar, — and saw the fair and fruitful island 
of Rhodes 

" Springing up from the bottom, 
Capable of feeding many men and suitable for flocks; " 

and at the nod of Zeus, 

"The island sprang from the watery 



Sea; and the Genial Father of penetrating beams, 
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it." 

The shifting islands ! who would not be willing 
that his house should be undermined by such 
a foe! The inhabitants of an island can tell 
what currents formed the land which he cul- 
tivates; and his earth is still being created or 
destroyed. There before his door, perchance, 
still empties the stream which brought down 
the material of his farm ages before, and is still 
bringing it down or washing it away, — the grace- 
ful, gentle robber! 

Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, 
or Sparkling Water, emptying in on our left, 
and heard the Falls of Amoskeag above. Large 
quantities of lumber, as we read in the gazetteer, 



306 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

were still annually floated down the Piscata- 
quoag to the Merrimack, and there are many- 
fine mill privileges on it. Just about the mouth 
of this river we passed the artificial falls where 
the canals of the Manchester Manufacturing 
Company discharge themselves into the Merri- 
mack. They are striking enough to have a 
name, and, with the scenery of a Bashpish, 
would be visited from far and near. The water 
falls thirty or forty feet over seven or eight steep 
and narrow terraces of stone, probably to break 
its force, and is converted into one mass of foam. 
This canal water did not seem to be the worse 
for the wear, but foamed and fumed as purely, 
and boomed as savagely and impressively, as 
a mountain torrent, and though it came from 
under a factory, we saw a rainbow here. These 
are now the Amoskeag Falls, removed a mile 
down stream. But we did not tarry to examine 
them minutely, making haste to get past the 
village here collected, and out of hearing of 
the hammer which was laying the foundation 
of another Lowell on the banks. At the time 
of our voyage Manchester was a village of about 
two thousand inhabitants, where we landed for 
a moment to get some cool water, and where an 
inhabitant told us that he was accustomed to 
go across the river into Goffstown for his water. 
But now, after nine years, as I have been told 
and indeed have witnessed, it contains sixteen 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 307 

thousand inhabitants. From a hill on the road 
between Goffstown and Hooksett, four miles dis- 
tant, I have since seen a thunder shower pass 
over, and the sun break out and shine on a city 
there, where I had landed nine years before in 
the fields to get a draught of water; and there 
was waving the flag of its museum, — where " the 
only perfect skeleton of a Greenland or river 
whale in the United States " was to be seen, and 
I also read in its directory of a " Manchester 
Athenseum and Gallery of the Fine Arts." 

According to the gazetteer, the descent of 
Amoskeag Falls, which are the most consider- 
able in the Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in half 
a mile. We locked ourselves through here 
with much ado, surmounting the successive 
watery steps of this river's stair-case in the 
midst of a crowd of villagers, jumping into the 
canal, to their amusement, to save our boat 
from upsetting, and consuming much river 
water in our service. Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, 
is said to mean " great fishing place." It was 
hereabouts that the Sachem Wannalancet re- 
sided. Tradition says that his tribe, when at 
war with the Mohawks, concealed their provi- 
sions in the cavities of the rocks in the upper 
part of these falls. The Indians who hid their 
provisions in these holes, and affirmed " that God 
had cut them out for that purpose," understood 
their origin and use better than the Royal 



308 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Society, who in their Transactions, in the last 
century, speaking of these very holes, declare 
that " they seem plainly to be artificial." 
Similar " pot-holes " may be seen at the Stone 
Flume on this river, on the Ottaway , at Bellows ' 
Falls on the Connecticut, and in the limestone 
rock at Shelburne Falls on Deerfield river in 
Massachusetts, and more or less generally about 
all falls. Perhaps the most remarkable curi- 
osity of this kind in New England is the well- 
known Basin on the Pemigewasset, one of the 
head-waters of this river, twenty by thirty feet 
in extent and proportionably deep, with a smooth 
and rounded brim, and filled with a cold, pel- 
lucid and greenish water. At Amoskeag the 
river is divided into many separate torrents 
and trickling rills by the rocks, and its volume 
is so much reduced by the drain of the canals 
that it does not fill its bed. There are many 
pot-holes here on a rocky island which the river 
washes over in high freshets. As at Shelburne 
Falls, where I first observed them, they are from 
one foot to four or five in diameter, and as many 
in depth, perfectly round and regular, with 
smooth and gracefully curved brims, like goblets. 
Their origin is apparent to the most careless 
observer. A stone which the current has washed 
down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a 
pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the 
course of centuries deeper and deeper into the 



AND MERRTMACK RIVERS 309 

rock, and in new freshets receiving the aid of 
fresh stones which are drawn into this trap and 
doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, 
doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until 
they either wear out, or wear through the bottom 
of their prison, or else are released by some 
revolution of nature. There lie the stones of 
various sizes, from a pebble to a foot or two in 
diameter, some of which have rested from their 
labor only since the spring, and some higher 
up which have lain still and dry for ages, — we 
notice some here at least sixteen feet above 
the present level of the water, — while others are 
still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any season. 
In one instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have 
worn quite through the rock, so that a portion 
of the river leaks through in anticipation of the 
fall. Some of these pot-holes at Amoskeag, in 
a very hard brown stone, had an oblong cylin- 
drical stone of the same material loosely fitting 
them. One, as much as fifteen feet deep and 
seven or eight in diameter, which was worn 
quite through to the water, had a huge rock of 
the same material, smooth but of irregular form, 
lodged in it. Everywhere there were the rudi- 
ments or the wrecks of a dimple in the rock; 
the rocky shells of whirlpools. As if, by force 
of example and sympathy after so many lessons, 
the rocks, the hardest material, had been en- 
deavoring to whirl or flow into the forms of the 



310 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

most fluid. The finest workers in stone are not 
copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of 
air and water working at their leisure with a 
liberal allowance of time. 

Not only have some of these basins been form- 
ing for countless ages, but others exist which 
must have been completed in a former geological 
period. There are some, we are told, in the town 
of Canaan in this State, with the stones still 
in them, on the height of land between the 
Merrimack and Connecticut, and nearly a 
thousand feet above these rivers, proving that 
the mountains and the rivers have changed 
places. There lie the stones which completed 
their revolutions perhaps before thoughts began 
to revolve in the brain of man. The periods 
of Hindoo and Chinese history, though they 
reach back to the time when the race of mortals 
is confounded with the race of gods, are as noth- 
ing compared with the periods which these 
stones have inscribed. That which commenced 
a rock when time was young, shall conclude a 
pebble in the unequal contest. With such ex- 
pense of time and natural forces are our very 
paving stones produced. They teach us lessons, 
these dumb workers; verily there are "sermons 
in stones and books in the running streams.'* 
In these very holes the Indians hid their pro- 
visions; but now there is no bread, but only its 
old neighbor stones at the bottom. Who knows 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 311 

how many races they have served thus? By 
as simple a law, some accidental by-law, per- 
chance, our system itself was made ready for 
its inhabitants. 

These, and such as these, must be our antiqui- 
ties, for lack of human vestiges. The monu- 
ments of heroes and the temples of the gods 
which may once have stood on the banks of 
this river, are now, at any rate, returned to dust 
and primitive soil. The murmur of unchroni- 
cled nations has died away along these shores, 
and once more Lowell and Manchester are on 
the trail of the Indian. 

The fact that Romans once inhabited her 
reflects no little dignity on Nature herself; 
that from some particular hill the Roman once 
looked out on the sea. She need not be ashamed 
of the vestiges of her children. How gladly 
the antiquary informs us that their vessels 
penetrated into this frith, or up that river of 
some remote isle! Their military monuments 
still remain on the hills and under the sod of the 
valleys. The oft-repeated Roman story is writ- 
ten in still legible characters in every quarter 
of the old world, and but to-day, perchance, a 
new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats 
and confirms their fame. Some "Judcea Capta" 
with a woman mourning under a palm tree, 
with silent argument and demonstration con- 
firms the pages of history. 



312 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Rome Jiving was the world's sole ornament; 
And dead is now the world's sole monument." 



"With her own weight down pressed now she lies, 
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies." 

If one doubts whether Grecian valor and pa- 
triotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go 
to Athens and see still upon the walls of the 
temple of Minerva the circular marks made by 
the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian 
war, which were suspended there. We have 
not far to seek for living and unquestionable 
evidence. The very dust takes shape and con- 
firms some story which we had read. As Fuller 
said, commenting on the zeal of Camden, "A 
broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate 
still surviving out of which the city is run out." 
When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis 
had formerly belonged to the Athenians, and 
not to the Megareans, he caused the tombs to 
be opened, and showed that the inhabitants of 
Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the 
same side with the Athenians, but the Mega- 
reans to the opposite side. There they were to 
be interrogated. 

Some minds are as little logical or argumenta- 
tive as nature; they can offer no reason or 
" guess," but they exhibit the solemn and in- 
controvertible fact. If a historical question 
arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. Their 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 313 

silent and practical logic convinces the reason 
and the understanding at the same time. Of 
such sort is always the only pertinent question 
and the only unanswerable reply. 

Our own country furnishes antiquities as 
ancient and durable, and as useful, as any; 
rocks at least as well covered with moss, and a 
soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, 
the very dust of nature. What if we cannot 
read Rome, or Greece, Etruria, or Carthage, 
or Egypt, or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs 
bare? The lichen on the rocks is a rude and 
simple shield which beginning and imperfect 
Nature suspended there. Still hangs her wrin- 
kled trophy. And here too the poet's eye may 
still detect the brazen nails which fastened 
Time's inscriptions, and if he has the gift, 
decipher them by this clue. The walls that 
fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and 
not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of 
ruins. Here may be heard the din of rivers, and 
ancient winds which have long since lost their 
names sought through our woods; — the first 
faint sounds of spring, older than the summer 
of Athenian glory, the titmouse lisping in the 
wood, the jay's scream and blue-bird's warble, 
and the hum of 

"bees that, fly 
About the laughing blossoms of sallowy." 



314 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Here is the gray dawn for antiquity, and our 
to-morrow's future should be at least paulo- 
post to theirs which we have put behind us. 
There are the red-maple and birchen leaves, old 
runes which are not yet deciphered; catkins, 
pine-cones, vines, oak-leaves, and acorns; the 
very things themselves, and not their forms in 
stone, — so much the more ancient and venerable. 
And even to the current summer there has come 
down tradition of a hoary -headed master of all 
art, who once filled every field and grove with 
statues and god-like architecture, of every 
design which Greece has lately copied; whose 
ruins are now mingled with the dust, and not 
one block remains upon another. The century 
sun and unwearied rain have wasted them, till 
not one fragment from that quarry now exists; 
and poets perchance will feign that gods sent 
down the material from heaven. 

What though the traveller tell us of the ruins 
of Egypt, are we so sick or idle, that we must 
sacrifice our America and to-day to some man's 
ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and 
Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons re- 
main, still more desert sand, and at length a 
wave of the Mediterranean sea, are needed to 
wash away the filth that attaches to their 
grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac 
for me. I behold the columns of a larger and 
purer temple. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 315 

This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome 
Shelters the measuring art and measurer's home. 
Behold these flowers, let us be up with time, 
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago, 
Erect ourselves and let those columns lie, 
Not stoop to raise a foil against the sky. 
Where is the spirit of that time but in 
This present day, perchance this present line? 
Three thousand years ago are not agone, 
They are still lingering in this summer morn, 
And Memnon's Mother sprightly greets us now, 
Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow. 
If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain, 
To enjoy our opportunities they remain. 

In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem 
Passaconaway, who was seen by Gookin " at 
Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and 
twenty years old." He was reputed a wise 
man and a powwow, and restrained his people 
from going to war with the English. They be- 
lieved " that he could make water burn, rocks 
move, and trees dance, and metamorphose him- 
self into a flaming man; that in winter he could 
raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, 
and produced a living snake from the skin of 
a dead one." In 1660, according to Gookin, 
at a great feast and dance, he made his farewell 
speech to his people, in which he said, that as 
he was not likely to see them met together again, 
he would leave them this word of advice, to 
take heed how they quarrelled with their Eng- 
lish neighbors, for though they might do them 



316 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

much mischief at first, it would prove the means 
of their own destruction. He himself, he said, 
had been as much an enemy to the English at 
their first coming as any, and had used all his 
arts to destroy them, or at least to prevent their 
settlement, but could by no means effect it. 
Gookin thought that he " possibly might have 
such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon Ballam 
who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said 'Surely there 
is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is 
there any divination against Israel.'" His son 
Wannalancet carefully followed his advice, and 
when Philip's war broke out, he withdrew his 
followers to Penacook, now Concord in New 
Hampshire, from the scene of the war. On his 
return afterwards he visited the minister of 
Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the history 
of that town, " wished to know whether Chelms- 
ford had suffered much during the war; and be- 
ing informed that it had not, and that God 
should be thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, 
'Me next."' 

Manchester was the residence of John Stark, 
a hero of two wars, and survivor of a third, and 
at his death the last but one of the American 
generals of the Revolution. He was born in 
the adjoining town of Londonderry, then Nur- 
field, in 1728. As early as 1752, he was taken 
prisoner by the Indians while hunting in the 
wilderness near Baker's river; he performed 




The Stark monument in Manchester 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 317 

notable service as a captain of rangers in the 
French war; commanded a regiment of the New 
Hampshire militia at the battle of Bunker Hill; 
and fought and won the battle of Bennington 
in 1777. He was past service in the last war, 
and died here in 1822, at the age of 94. His 
monument stands upon the second bank of the 
river, about a mile and a half above the falls, 
and commands a prospect several miles up and 
down the Merrimack. It suggested how much 
more impressive in the landscape is the tomb 
of a hero than the dwellings of the inglorious 
living. Who is most dead, — a hero by whose 
monument you stand, or his descendants of 
whom you have never heard? 

The graves of Passaconaway and Wanna- 
lancet are marked by no monument on the bank 
of their native river. 

Every town which we passed, if we may be- 
lieve the gazetteer, had been the residence of 
some great man. But though we knocked at 
many doors, and even made particular inqui- 
ries, we could not find that there were any now 
living. Under the head of Litchfield we read, — 

"The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life 
in this town." According to another, " He 
was a classical scholar, a good lawyer, a wit, and 
a poet." We saw his old gray house just be- 
Jow Great Nesenkeag Brook. — Under the head 



318 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of Merrimac, — " Hon. Matthew Thornton, one 
of the signers of the Declaration of American 
Independence, resided many years in this town." 
His house too we saw from the river. — " Dr. 
Jonathan Gove, a man distinguished for his 
urbanity, his talents and professional skill, 
resided in this town [Goffstown.] He was one 
of the oldest practitioners of medicine in the 
county. He was many years an active member 
of the legislature." — " Hon. Robert Means, who 
died Jan. 24, 1823, at the age of 80, was for a 
long period a resident in Amherst. He was a 
native of Ireland. In 1764 he came to this 
country, where by his industry and application 
to business, he acquired a large property, and 
great respect." — "William Stinson, [one of the 
first settlers of Dunbarton,] born in Ireland, 
came to Londonderry with his father. He 
was much respected and was a useful man. 
James Rogers was from Ireland, and father to 
Major Robert Rogers. He was shot in the woods, 
being mistaken for a bear." — "Rev. Matthew 
Clark, second minister of Londonderry, was a 
native of Ireland, who had in early life been an 
officer in the army, and distinguished himself 
in the defence of the city of Londonderry, when 
beseiged by the army of King James II., a.d. 
1688-9. He afterwards relinquished a military 
life for the clerical profession. He possessed a 
strong mind, marked by a considerable degree 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 319 

of eccentricity. He died Jan. 25, 1735, and was 
borne to the grave, at his particular request, 
by his former companions in arms, of whom there 
were a considerable number among the early 
settlers of this town; several of whom had been 
made free from taxes throughout the British 
dominions by King William, for their bravery 
in that memorable seige." — Col. George Reid 
and Capt. David M 'Clary, also citizens of Lon- 
donderry, were "distinguished and brave" offi- 
cers. — "Major Andrew M 'Clary, a native of 
this town [Epsom], fell at the battle of Breed's 
Hill." — Many of these heroes, like the illus- 
trious Roman, were plowing when the news of 
the massacre at Lexington arrived, and straight- 
way left their plows in the furrow, and repaired 
to the scene of action. Some miles from where 
we now were, there once stood a guide-board 
which said, "3 miles to Squire MacGaw's." — 

But generally speaking, the land is now, at any 
rate, very barren of men, and we doubt if there 
are as many hundreds as we read of. It may be 
that we stood too near. 

Uncannunuc Mountain in Goffstown was 
visible from Amoskeag, five or six miles west- 
ward. Its name is said to mean "The Two 
Breasts," there being two eminences some dis- 
tance apart. The highest, which is about 
fourteen hundred feet above the sea, probably 



320 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

affords a more extensive view of the Merrimack 
valley and the adjacent country than any other 
hill, though it is somewhat obstructed by woods. 
Only a few short reaches of the river are visible, 
but you can trace its course far down stream by 
the sandy tracts on its banks. 

A little south of Uncannunuc, about sixty 
years ago, as the story goes, an old woman who 
went out to gather pennyroyal, tript her foot in 
the bail of a small brass kettle in the dead grass 
and bushes. Some say that flints and charcoal 
and some traces of a camp were also found. 
This kettle, holding about four quarts, is still 
preserved and used to dye thread in. It is 
supposed to have belonged to some old French 
or Indian hunter, who was killed in one of his 
hunting or scouting excursions, and so never 
returned to look after his kettle. 

But we were most interested to hear of the 
pennyroyal, it is so soothing to be reminded 
that wild nature produces anything ready for 
the use of man. Men know that something is 
good. One says that it is yellow-dock, another 
that it is bitter-sweet, another that it is slippery- 
elm bark, burdock, catnip, calamint, elicampane, 
thorough wort, or pennyroyal. A man may 
esteem himself happy when that which is his 
food is also his medicine. There is no kind of 
herb that grows, but somebody or other says 
that it is good. I am very glad to hear it. It 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 321 

reminds me of the first chapter of Genesis. 
But how should they know that it is good? 
That is the mystery to me. I am always agree- 
ably disappointed; it is incredible that they 
should have found it out. Since all things 
are good, men fail at last to distinguish which 
is the bane, and which the antidote. There 
are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically 
opposite. Stuff a cold and starve a cold are 
but two ways. They are the two practices both 
always in full blast. Yet you must take advice 
of the one school as if there was no other. In 
respect to religion and the healing art, all na- 
tions are still in a state of barbarism. In the 
most civilized countries the priest is still but a 
Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine. 
Consider the deference which is everywhere 
paid to a doctor's opinion. Nothing more 
strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than 
medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and 
universally successful. In this case it becomes 
literally true that no imposition is too great for 
the credulity of men. Priests and physicians 
should never look one another in the face. They 
have no common ground, nor is there any to 
mediate between them. When the one comes, 
the other goes. They could not come together 
without laughter, or a significant silence, for 
the one's profession is a satire on the other's, 
and either 's success would be the other 's failure. 



322 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

It is wonderful that the physician should ever 
die, and that the priest should ever live. Why is 
it that the priest is never called to consult with 
the physician? It is because men believe prac- 
tically that matter is independent of spirit. 
But what is quackery? It is commonly an 
attempt to cure the diseases of a man by address- 
ing his body alone. There is need of a physi- 
cian who shall minister to both soul and body 
at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between 
two stools. 

After passing through the locks, we had 
poled ourselves through the canal here, about 
half a mile in length, to the boatable part of the 
river. Above Amoskeag the river spreads out 
into a lake reaching a mile or two without a 
bend. There were many canal boats here 
bound up to Hooksett, about eight miles, and 
as they were going up empty with a fair wind, 
one boatman offered to take us in tow if we would 
wait. But when we came alongside, we found 
that they meant to take us on board, since 
otherwise we should clog their motions too much; 
but as our boat was too heavy to be lifted aboard, 
we pursued our way up the stream, as before, 
while the boatmen were at their dinner, and 
came to anchor at length under some alders on 
the opposite shore, where we could take our 
lunch. Though far on one side, every sound 
was wafted over to us from the opposite bank, 




S 8 

V. 



■5 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 323 

and from the harbor of the canal, and we could 
see everything that passed. By and by came 
several canal boats, at intervals of a quarter of 
a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light 
breeze, and one by one disappeared round a 
point above. With their broad sails set, they 
moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish 
and fitful breeze, like one-winged antediluvian 
birds, and as if impelled by some mysterious 
counter current. It was a grand motion, so 
slow and stately, this "standing out," as the 
phrase is, expressing the gradual and steady 
progress of a vessel, as if it were by mere recti- 
tude and disposition, without shuffling. Their 
sails, which stood so still, were like chips cast 
into the current of the air to show which way 
it set. At length the boat which we had spoken 
came along, keeping the middle of the stream, 
and when within speaking distance the steers- 
men called out ironically to say, that if we would 
come alongside now he would take us in tow; 
but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in 
the shade till we had finished our lunch, and when 
the last boat had disappeared round the point 
with flapping sail, for the breeze had now sunk 
to a zephyr, with our own sails set, and plying 
our oars, we shot rapidly up the stream in pur- 
suit, and as we glided close alongside, while 
they were vainly invoking ^Eolus to their aid, 
we returned their compliment by proposing, if 



324 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

they would throw us a rope, to " take them in 
tow," to which these Merrimack sailors had 
no suitable answer ready. Thus we gradually 
overtook each boat in succession until we had 
the river to ourselves again. 

Our course this afternoon was between Man- 
chester and Goffstown. 

While we float here, far from that tributary 
stream on whose banks our friends and kindred 
dwell, our thoughts, like the stars, come out of 
their horizon still; for there circulates a finer 
blood than Lavoisier has discovered the laws of, 
— the blood, not of kindred merely, but of kind- 
ness, whose pulse still beats at any distance and 
forever. After years of vain familiarity, some 
distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which 
we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis 
than the wisest or kindest words. We are some- 
times made aware of a kindness long passed, 
and realize that there have been times when our 
friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty 
a character that they passed over us like the 
winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated 
us not as what we were, but as what we aspired 
to be. There has just reached us, it may be, 
the nobleness of some such silent behavior, not 
to be forgotten, not to be remembered, and we 
shudder to think how it fell on us cold, though 
in some true but tardy hour we endeavor to 
wipe off these scores. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 325 

In my experience, persons, when they are made 
the subject of conversation, though with a 
friend, are commonly the most prosaic and tri- 
vial of facts. The universe seems bankrupt as 
soon as we begin to discuss the character of 
individuals. Our discourse all runs to slander, 
and our limits grow narrower as we advance. 
How is it that we are impelled to treat our old 
friends so ill when we obtain new ones? The 
housekeeper says, I never had any new crockery 
in my life but I began to break the old. I say, 
let us speak of mushrooms and forest trees rather. 
Yet we can sometimes afford to remember them 
in private. — 

Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy, 

Whose features all were cast in Virtues' mould, 

As one she had designed for Beauty's toy, 

But after manned him for her own stronghold. 

On every side he open was as day, 

That you might see no lack of strength within, 

For walls and ports do only serve alway 
For a pretence to feebleness and sin. 

Say not that Caesar was victorious, 

With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame, 
In other sense this youth was glorious, 

Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came. 

No strength went out to get him victory, 

When all was income of its own accord; 
For where he went none other was to see, 

But all were parcel of their noble lord. 



326 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

He forayed like the subtil haze of summer, 
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes, 

And revolutions works without a murmur, 
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies. 

So was I taken unawares by this, 
I quite forgot my homage to confess; 

Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is, 
I might have loved him had I loved him less. 

Each moment as we nearer drew to each, 
A stern respect withheld us further yet, 

So that we seemed beyond each other's reach, 
And less acquainted than when first we met. 

We two were one while we did sympathize, 
So could we not the simplest bargain drive; 

And what avails it now that we are wise, 
If absence doth this doubleness contrive? 

Eternity may not the chance repeat, 
But I must tread my single way alone, 

In sad remembrance that we once did meet, 
And know that bliss irrevocably gone. 

The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing, 

For elegy has other subject none; 
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring 

Knell of departure from that other one. 

Make haste and celebrate my tragedy; 

With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields; 
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me 

Than all the joys other occasion yields. 



Is't then too late the damage to repair? 

Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft 
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, 

But in my hands the wheat and kernel left. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 327 

If I but love that virtue which he is, 

Though it be scented in the morning air, 

Still shall we be truest acquaintances, 
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare. 

Friendship is evanescent in every man's 
experience, and remembered like heat lightning 
in past summers. Fair and flitting like a summer 
cloud ; — there is always some vapor in the air, 
no matter how long the drought; there are even 
April showers. Surely from time to time, for 
its vestiges never depart, it floats through our 
atmosphere. It takes place, like vegetation 
in so many materials, because there is such a 
law, but always without permanent form, though 
ancient and familiar as the sun and moon, and 
as sure to come again. The heart is forever 
inexperienced. They silently gather as by magic, 
these never failing, never quite deceiving visions, 
like the bright and fleecy clouds in the calmest 
and clearest days. The Friend is some fair 
floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in 
Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be en- 
countered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere 
he may sail before the constant trades. But 
who would not sail through mutiny and storm 
even over Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous 
retreating shores of some continent man? The 
imagination still clings to the faintest tradition 
of 



328 WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

THE ATLANTIDES 

The smothered streams of love, which flow 

More bright than Phlegethon, more low, 

Island us ever, like the sea, 

In an Atlantic mystery. 

Our fabled shores none ever reach, 

No mariner has found our beach, 

Only our mirage now is seen, 

And neighboring waves with floating green, 

Yet still the oldest charts contain 

Some dotted outline of our main; 

In ancient times midsummer days 

Unto the western islands' gaze, 

To Teneriffe and the Azores, 

Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores. 

But sink not yet, ye desolate isles, 
Anon your coast with commerce smiles, 
And richer freights ye '11 furnish far 
Than Africa or Malabar. 
Be fair, be fertile evermore, 
Ye rumored but untrodden shore, 
Princes and monarchs will contend 
Who first unto your land shall send, 
And pawn the jewels of the crown 
To call your distant soil their own. 

Columbus has sailed westward of these isles 
by the mariner's compass, but neither he nor 
his successors have found them. We are no 
nearer than Plato was. The earnest seeker 
and hopeful discoverer of this New World always 
haunts the outskirts of his time, and walks 
through the densest crowd uninterrupted, and 
as it were in a straight line. — 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 329 

Sea and land are but his neighbors, 

And companions in his labors, 

Who on the ocean's verge and firm land's end 

Doth long and truly seek his Friend. 

Many men dwell far inland, 

But he alone sits on the strand. 

Whether he ponders men or books, 

Always still he seaward looks, 

Marine news he ever reads, 

And the slightest glances heeds, 

Feels the sea breeze on his cheek 

At each word the landsmen speak, 

In every companion's eye 

A sailing vessel doth descry; 

In the ocean's sullen roar 

From some distant port he hears, 

Of wrecks upon a distant shore, 

And the ventures of past years. 

Who does not walk on the plain as amid the 
columns of Tadmore of the desert? There is 
on the earth no institution which Friendship 
has established; it is not taught by any religion; 
no scripture contains its maxims. It has no 
temple, nor even a solitary column. There 
goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but 
the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a foot- 
print on the shore. The hunter has found only 
fragments of pottery and the monuments of 
inhabitants. 

However, our fates at least are social. Our 
courses do not diverge; but as the web of des- 
tiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more 
and more into the centre. Men naturally, 



330 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

though feebly, seek this alliance, and their 
actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to 
lay the chief stress on likeness and not on diff- 
erence, and in foreign bodies we admit that 
there are many degrees of warmth below blood 
heat, but none of cold above it. 

One or two persons come to my house from 
time to time, there being proposed to them the 
faint possibility of intercourse. They are as 
full as they are silent, and wait for my plectrum 
to stir the strings of their lyre. If they could 
ever come to the length of a sentence, or hear 
one, on that ground they are dreaming of ! They 
speak faintly, and do not obtrude themselves. 
They have heard some news, which none, not 
even they themselves, can impart. It is a 
wealth they bear about them which can be ex- 
pended in various ways. What came they out 
to seek? 

No word is oftener on the lips of men than 
Friendship, and indeed no thought is more 
familiar to their aspirations. All men are dream- 
ing of it, and its drama, which is always a tragedy, 
is enacted daily. It is the secret of the universe. 
You may tread the town, you may wander the 
country, and none shall ever speak of it, yet 
thought is everywhere busy about it, and the 
idea of what is possible in this respect affects 
our behavior toward all new men and women. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 331 

and a great many old ones. Nevertheless, I 
can remember only two or three essays on this 
subject in all literature. No wonder that the 
Mythology, and Arabian Nights, and Shake- 
speare, and Scott's novels entertain us, — we 
are poets and fablers and dramatists and novel- 
ists ourselves. We are continually acting a 
part in a more interesting drama than any writ- 
ten. We are dreaming that our Friends are our 
Friends, and that we are our Friends' Friends. 
Our actual Friends are but distant relations of 
those to whom we are pledged. We never ex- 
change more than three words with a Friend in 
our lives on that level to which our thoughts 
and feelings almost habitually rise. One goes 
forth prepared to say "Sweet Friends!" and 
the salutation is "Damn your eyes!" But 
never mind; faint heart never won true Friend. 
O my Friend, may it come to pass, once, that 
when you are my Friend I may be yours. 

Of what use the friendliest disposition even, 
if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it 
is forever postponed to unimportant duties and 
relations? Friendship is first, Friendship last. 
But it is equally impossible to forget our Friends, 
and to make them answer to our ideal. When 
they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep 
them company. How often we find ourselves 
turning our backs on our actual Friends, that 
we may go and meet their ideal cousins. I 



332 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

would that I were worthy to be any man's 
Friend. 

What is commonly honored with the name 
of Friendship is no very profound or powerful 
instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends 
greatly. I do not often see the farmers made 
seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their 
Friendship for one another. They are not 
often transfigured and translated by love in 
each other's presence. I do not observe them 
purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a 
man. If one abates a little the price of his 
wood, or gives a neighbor his vote at town- 
meeting, or a barrel of apples, or lends him his 
wagon frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance 
of Friendship. Nor do the farmers' wives 
lead lives consecrated to Friendship. I do not 
see the pair of farmer friends of either sex pre- 
pared to stand against the world. There are 
only two or three couples in history. To say 
that a man is your Friend, means commonly no 
more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most 
contemplate only what would be the accidental 
and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that 
the Friend can assist in time of need, by his 
substance, or his influence, or his counsel; but 
he who foresees such advantages in this relation 
proves himself blind to its real advantage, or 
indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation it- 
self. Such services are particular and menial, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 333 

compared with the perpetual and all-embracing 
service which it is. Even the utmost good-will 
and harmony and practical kindness are not 
sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live 
in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. 
We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe 
our bodies, — neighbors are kind enough for that, 
— but to do the like office to our spirits. For 
this few are rich enough, however well disposed 
they may be. 

Think of the importance of Friendship in the 
education of men. It will make a man honest; 
it will make him a hero; it will make him a 
saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the 
just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, 
the sincere with the sincere, man with man. — 

"Why love among the virtues is not known, 
Is that love is them all contract in one." 

All the abuses which are the object of reform 
with the philanthropist, the statesman, and the 
housekeeper, are unconsciously amended in the 
intercourse of Friends. A Friend is one who 
incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting 
from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate 
them in us. It takes two to speak the truth, — 
one to speak, and another to hear. How can 
one treat with magnanimity mere wood and 
stone? If we dealt only with the false and dis- 
honest, we should at last forget how to speak 



334 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

truth. In our daily intercourse with men, our 
nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to 
rust. None will pay us the compliment to 
expect nobleness from us. We ask our neighbor 
to suffer himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely, 
nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He 
does not even hear this prayer. He says prac- 
tically, — I will be content if you treat me as no 
better than I should be, as deceitful, mean, dis- 
honest, and selfish. For the most part, we are 
contented so to deal and to be dealt with, and 
we do not think that for the mass of men there 
is any truer and nobler relation possible. A man 
may have good neighbors, so called, and ac- 
quaintances, and even companions, wife, par- 
ents, brothers, sisters, children, who meet him- 
self and one another on this ground only. The 
State does not demand justice of its members, 
but thinks that it succeeds very well with the 
least degree of it, hardly more than rogues 
practice; and so do the family and the neighbor- 
hood. What is commonly called Friendship 
even is only a little more honor among rogues. 
But sometimes we are said to love another, 
that is to stand in a true relation to him, so that 
we give the best to, and receive the best from, 
him. Between whom there is hearty truth 
there is love; and in proportion to our truthful- 
ness and confidence in one another, our lives 
are divine and miraculous, and answer to our 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 335 

ideal. There are passages of affection in our in- 
tercourse with mortal men and women, such 
as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which 
transcend our earthly life, and anticipate heaven 
for us. What is this Love that may come right 
into the middle of a prosaic Goffstown day, 
equal to any of the gods? that discovers a new 
world, fair and fresh and eternal, occupying 
the place of this old one, when to the common 
eye a dust has settled on the universe? which 
world cannot else be reached, and does not exist. 
What other words, we may almost ask, are 
memorable and worthy to be repeated than 
those which love has inspired? It is wonderful 
that they were ever uttered. They are few and 
rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are 
incessantly repeated and modulated by the 
memory. All other words crumble off with 
the stucco which overlies the heart. We should 
not dare to repeat them now aloud. We are 
not competent to hear them at all times. 

The books for young people say a great deal 
about the selection of Friends; it is because they 
really have nothing to say about Friends. They 
mean associates and confidants merely. " Know 
that the contrariety of foe and Friend proceeds 
from God." Friendship takes place between 
those who have an affinity for one another, and 
is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. 
No professions nor advances will avail. Even 



336 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do 
with it; but it follows after silence, as the buds 
in the graft do not put forth into leaves till 
long after the graft has taken. It is a drama 
in which the parties have no part to act. We 
are all Mussulmans and fatalists in this respect. 
Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they 
must say or do something kind whenever they 
meet; they must never be cold. But they who 
are Friends do not do what they think they 
must, but what they must. Even their Friend- 
ship is in one sense but a sublime phenomenon 
to them. 

The true and not despairing Friend will 
address his Friend in some such terms as these. 

"I never asked thy leave to let me love thee, — 
I have a right. I love thee not as something 
private and personal, which is your own, but 
as something universal and worthy of love, 
which I have found. O how I think of you! 
You are purely good, — you are infinitely good. 
I can trust you forever. I did not think that 
humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity 
to live." 

"You are the fact in a fiction, — you are the 

truth more strange and admirable than fiction. 

Consent only to be what you are. I alone will 

never stand in your way." 

• "This is what I would like, — to be as intimate 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 337 

with you as our spirits are intimate, — respecting 
you as I respect my ideal. Never to profane 
one another by word or action, even by a thought. 
Between us, if necessary, let there be no acquain- 
tance." 

"I have discovered you; how can you be 
concealed from me?" 

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend 
will religiously accept and wear and not dis- 
grace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each 
other's hopes. They are kind to each other's 
dreams. 

Though the poet says, "'Tis the preemi- 
nence of Friendship to impute excellence," yet 
we can never praise our Friend, nor esteem him 
praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can 
please us by any behavior, or ever treat us well 
enough. That kindness which has so good a 
reputation elsewhere can least of all consist 
with this relation, and no such affront can be 
offered to a Friend, as a conscious good-will, 
a friendliness which is not a necessity of the 
Friend's nature. 

The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted 
to one another, by constant constitutional differ- 
ences, and are most commonly and surely the 
complements of one another. How natural 
and easy it is for man to secure the attention 
of woman to what interests himself. Men and 



338 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

women of equal culture, thrown together, are 
sure to be of a certain value to one another, 
more than men to men. There exists already 
a natural disinterestedness and liberality in 
such society, and I think that any man will more 
confidently carry his favorite books to read to 
some circle of intelligent women, than to one 
of his own sex. The visit of man to man is 
wont to be an interruption, but the sexes natur- 
ally expect one another. Yet Friendship is no 
respecter of sex ; and perhaps it is more rare be- 
tween the sexes, than between two of the same sex. 
Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of per- 
fect equality. It cannot well spare any out- 
ward sign of equal obligation and advantage. 
The nobleman can never have a Friend among 
his retainers, nor the king among his subjects. 
Not that the parties to it are in all respects 
equal, but they are equal in all that respects or 
affects their Friendship. The one's love is 
exactly balanced and represented by the other's. 
Persons are only the vessels which contain the 
nectar, and the hydrostatic paradox is the sym- 
bol of love's law. It finds its level and rises 
to its fountain-head in all breasts, and its slen- 
derest column balances the ocean. — 

Love equals swift and slow, 

And high and low, 
Racer and lame, 

The hunter and his game. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 339 

The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender 
than the other. A hero's love is as delicate as a 
maiden's. 

Confucius said, "Never contract Friendship 
with a man that is not better than thyself." 
It is the merit and preservation of Friendship, 
that it takes place on a level higher than the 
actual characters of the parties would seem to 
warrant. The rays of light come to us in such 
a curve that every man whom we meet appears 
to be taller than he actually is. Such founda- 
tion has civility. My Friend is that one whom 
I can associate with my choicest thought. I 
always assign to him a nobler employment in 
my absence than I ever find him engaged in; 
and I imagine that the hours which he devotes 
to me were snatched from a higher society. The 
sorest insult which I ever received from a Friend 
was, when he behaved with the license which 
only long and cheap acquaintance allows to 
one's faults, in my presence, without shame, and 
still addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, 
lest thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one 
frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to 
the progress of thy love. 

Friendship is never established as an under- 
stood relation. Do you demand that I be less 
your Friend that you may know it? Yet what 
right have I to think that another cherishes so 
rare a sentiment for me? It is a miracle which 



340 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of 
the purest imagination and the rarest faith. 
It says by a silent but eloquent behavior, — "I 
will be so related to thee as thou canst imagine; 
even so thou mayest believe. I will spend truth, 
— all my wealth on thee," — and the Friend 
responds silently through his nature and life, 
and treats his Friend with the same divine 
courtesy. He knows us literally through thick 
and thin. He never asks for a sign of love, but 
can distinguish it by the features which it nat- 
urally wears. We never need to stand upon 
ceremony with him with regard to his visits. 
Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that I 
am glad to see thee when thou comest. It 
would be paying too dear for thy visit to ask 
for it. Where my Friend lives there are all 
riches and every attraction, and no slight 
obstacle can keep me from him. Let me 
never have to tell thee what I have not to tell. 
Let our intercourse be wholly above ourselves, 
and draw us up to it. The language of 
Friendship is not words but meanings. It is 
an intelligence above language. One imagines 
endless conversations with his Friend, in which 
the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be 
spoken without hesitancy, or end; but the experi- 
ence is commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances 
may come and go, and have a word ready for 
every occasion; but what puny word shall he 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 341 

utter whose very breath is thought and meaning? 
Suppose you go to bid farewell to your Friend 
who is setting out on a journey; what other 
outward sign do you know of than to shake 
his hand? Have you any palaver ready for 
him then? any box of salve to commit to his 
pocket? any particular message to send by him? 
any statement which you had forgotten to 
make? — as if you could forget anything. — No, 
it is much that you take his hand and say Fare- 
well; that you could easily omit; so far custom has 
prevailed. It is even painful, if he is to go, that 
he should linger so long. If he must go, let 
him go quickly. Have you any last words? 
Alas, it is only the word of words, which you 
have so long sought and found not; you have 
not a first word yet. There are few even whom 
I should venture to call earnestly by their most 
proper names. A name pronounced is the recog- 
nition of the individual to whom it belongs. 
He who can pronounce my name aright, he can 
call me, and is entitled to my love and service. 
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded 
as that of hate. When it is durable it is serene 
and equable. Even its famous pains begin only 
with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, 
though all would fain be. It is one proof of a 
man's fitness for Friendship that he is able to 
do without that which is cheap and passionate. 
A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The 



342 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of 
their love, and know no other law nor kindness. 
It is not extravagant and insane, but what it 
says is something established henceforth, and 
will bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, 
it is better and fairer news, and no time will 
ever shame it, or prove it false. This is a plant 
which thrives best in a temperate zone, where 
summer and winter alternate with one another. 
The Friend is a necessarius, and meets his 
Friend on homely ground; not on carpets and 
cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they 
will sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws. 
They will meet without any outcry, and part 
without loud sorrow. Their relation implies 
such qualities as the warrior prizes; for it takes 
a valor to open the hearts of men as well as the 
gates of cities. 

The Friendship which Wawatam testified 
for Henry the fur-trader, as described in the 
latter 's "Adventures," so almost bare and 
leafless, yet not blossomless nor fruitless, is 
remembered with satisfaction and security. The 
stern imperturbable warrior, after fasting, soli- 
tude, and mortification of body, comes to the 
white man's lodge, and affirms that he is the 
white brother whom he saw in his dream, and 
adopts him henceforth. He buries the hatchet 
as it regards his friend, and they hunt and feast 
and make maple-sugar together. "Metals unite 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 343 

from fluxility; birds and beasts from motives 
of convenience; fools from fear and stupidity; 
and just men at sight." If Wawatam would 
taste the " white man's milk" with his tribe, 
or take his bowl of human broth made of the 
trader 's fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place 
of safety for his Friend, whom he has rescued 
from a similar fate. At length, after a long 
winter of undisturbed and happy intercourse 
in the family of the chieftain in the wilderness, 
hunting and fishing, they return in the spring 
to Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs; and 
it becomes necessary for Wawatam to take 
leave of his Friend at the Isle aux Outardes, 
when the latter, to avoid his enemies, proceeded 
to the Sault de Sainte Marie, supposing that 
they were to be separated for a short time only. 
"We now exchanged farewells," says Henry, 
"with an emotion entirely reciprocal. I did 
not quit the lodge without the most grateful 
sense of the many acts of goodness which I had 
experienced in it, nor without the sincerest re- 
spect for the virtues which I had witnessed 
among its members. All the family accompanied 
me to the beach; and the canoe had no sooner 
put off than Wawatam commenced an address 
to the Kichi Manito, beseeching him to take 
care of me, his brother, till we should next meet. 
— We had proceeded to too great a distance to 
allow of our hearing his voice, before Wawatam 



344 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

had ceased to offer up his prayers." We 
never hear of him again. 

Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it is 
has not much human blood in it, but consists 
with a certain disregard for men and their 
erections, the Christian duties and humanities, 
while it purifies the air like electricity. There 
may be the sternest tragedy in the relation of 
two more than usually innocent and true to their 
highest instincts. We may call it an essentially 
heathenish intercourse, free and irresponsible 
in its nature, and practising all the virtues gra- 
tuitously. It is not the highest sympathy merely, 
but a pure and lofty society, a fragmentary and 
godlike intercourse of ancient date, still kept up 
at intervals, which, remembering itself, does not 
hesitate to disregard the humbler rights and 
duties of humanity. It requires immaculate 
and godlike qualities full-grown, and exists at 
all only by condescension and anticipation of 
the remotest future. We love nothing which is 
merely good and not fair, if such a thing is 
possible. Nature puts some kind of blossom 
before every fruit, not simply a calyx behind it. 
When the Friend comes out of his heathenism 
and superstition, and breaks his idols, being 
converted by the precepts of a newer testament; 
when he forgets his mythology, and treats his 
Friend like a Christian, or as he can afford; then 
Friendship ceases to be Friendship, and becomes 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 345 

charity; that principle which established the 
almshouse is now beginning with its charity at 
home, and establishing an almshouse and pauper 
relations there. 

As for the number which this society admits, 
it is at any rate to be begun with one, the noblest 
and greatest that we know, and whether the 
world will ever carry it further, whether, as 
Chaucer affirms, 

"There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair," 

remains to be proved ; — 

"And certaine he is well begone 
Among a thousand that findeth one." 

We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any 
while we are conscious that another is more 
deserving of our love. Yet Friendship does not 
stand for numbers; the Friend does not count 
his Friends on his fingers; they are not numer- 
able. The more there are included by this 
bond, if they are indeed included, the rarer 
and diviner the quality of the love that binds 
them. I am ready to believe that as private 
and intimate a relation may exist by which 
three are embraced, as between two. Indeed 
we cannot have too many friends; the virtue 
which we appreciate we to some extent appro- 
priate, so that thus we are made at last more 



346 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

fit for every relation of life. A base Friendship 
is of a narrowing and exclusive tendency, but 
a noble one is not exclusive; its very superfluity 
and dispersed love is the humanity which sweet- 
ens society, and sympathizes with foreign na- 
tions ; for though its foundations are private, it is 
in effect, a public affair and a public advantage, 
and the Friend, more than the father of a family, 
deserves well of the state. 

The only danger in Friendship is that it will 
end. It is a delicate plant though a native. 
The least unworthiness, even if it be unknown 
to one's self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know 
that those faults which he observes in his Friend 
his own faults attract. There is no rule more 
invariable than that we are paid for our suspi- 
cions by finding what we suspected. By our 
narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have 
so much and such of you, my Friend, no more. 
Perhaps there are none charitable, none disin- 
terested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough, 
for a true and lasting Friendship. 

I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely 
that I do not appreciate their fineness. I shall 
not tell them whether I do or not. As if they 
expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing 
which they uttered or did. Who knows but it 
was finely appreciated. It may be that your 
silence was the finest thing of the two. There 










By the waterside 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 347 

are some things which a man never speaks of, 
which are much finer kept silent about. To the 
highest communications we only lend a silent 
ear. Our finest relations are not simply kept 
silent about, but buried under a positive depth 
of silence, never to be revealed. It may be that 
we are not even yet acquainted. In human in- 
tercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is 
misunderstanding about words, but when silence 
is not understood. Then there can never be 
an explanation. What avails it that another 
loves you, if he does not understand you? Such 
love is a curse. What sort of companions are 
they who are presuming always that their silence 
is more expressive than yours? How foolish, 
and inconsiderate, and unjust, to conduct as 
if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not 
your Friend always equal ground of complaint? 
No doubt my Friends sometimes speak to me in 
vain, but they do not know what things I hear 
which they are not aware that they have spoken. 
I know that I have frequently disappointed them 
by not giving them words when they expected 
them, or such as they expected. Whenever I 
see my Friend I speak to him, but the expector, 
the man with the ears, is not he. They will 
complain too that you are hard. O ye that would 
have the cocoanut wrong side outwards, when 
next I weep I will let you know. They ask for 
words and deeds, when a true relation is word 



348 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and deed. If they know not of these things, 
how can they be informed? We often forbear to 
confess our feelings, not from pride, but for fear 
that we could not continue to love the one who 
required us to give such proof of our affection. 

I know a woman who possesses a restless and 
intelligent mind, interested in her own culture, 
and earnest to enjoy the highest possible ad- 
vantages, and I meet her with pleasure as a 
natural person who not a little provokes me, 
and I suppose is stimulated in turn by myself. 
Yet our acquaintance plainly does not attain to 
that degree of confidence and sentiment which 
women, which all, in fact, covet. I am glad to 
help her, as I am helped by her; I like very 
well to know her with a sort of stranger's privi- 
lege, and hesitate to visit her often, like her other 
Friends. My nature pauses here, I do not well 
know why. Perhaps she does not make the 
highest demand on me, a religious demand. 
Some, with whose prejudices or peculiar bias I 
have no sympathy, yet inspire me with confi- 
dence, and I trust that they confide in me also 
as a religious heathen at least, — a good Greek. 
I too have principles as well founded as their 
own. If this person could conceive that, without 
wilfulness, I associate with her as far as our 
destinies are coincident, as far as our Good 
Geniuses permit, and still value such intercourse, 
it would be a grateful assurance to me. I feel 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 349 

as if I appeared careless, indifferent, and without 
principle to her, not expecting more, and yet 
not content with less. If she could know that I 
make an infinite demand on myself, as well as 
on all others, she would see that this true though 
incomplete intercourse, is infinitely better than 
a more unreserved but falsely grounded one, 
without the principle of growth in it. For a 
companion, I require one who will make an 
equal demand on me with my own genius. Such 
a one will always be rightly tolerant. It is 
suicide and corrupts good manners to welcome 
any less than this. I value and trust those who 
love and praise my aspiration rather than my 
performance. If you would not stop to look at 
me, but look whither I am looking and further, 
then my education could not dispense with your 
company. 

My love must be as free 

As is the eagle's wing, 
Hovering o'er land and sea 

And everything. 

I must not dim my eye 

In thy saloon, 
I must not leave my sky 

And nightly moon. 

Be not the fowler's net 

Which stays my flight, 
And craftily is set 

T' allure the sight. 



350 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

But be the favoring gale 

That bears me on. 
And still doth fill my sail 

When thou art gone. 

I cannot leave my sky 

For thy caprice, 
True love would soar as high 

As heaven is. 

The eagle would not brook 

Her mate thus won, 
Who trained his eye to look 

Beneath the sun. 

Nothing is so difficult as to help a Friend in 
matters which do not require the aid of Friend- 
ship, but only a cheap and trivial service, if 
your Friendship wants the basis of a thorough 
practical acquaintance. I stand in the friend- 
liest relation, on social and spiritual grounds, to 
one who does not perceive what practical skill I 
have, but when he seeks my assistance in such 
matters, is wholly ignorant of that one whom he 
deals with; does not use my skill, which in such 
matters is much greater than his, but only my 
hands. I know another, who, on the contrary, 
is remarkable for his discrimination in this 
respect; who knows how to make use of the 
talents of others when he does not possess the 
same; knows when not to look after or oversee, 
and stops short at his man. It is a rare pleasure 
to serve him, which all laborers know. I am 
not a little pained by the other kind of treat- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 351 

ment. It is as if, after the friendliest and most 
ennobling intercourse, your Friend should use 
you as a hammer and drive a nail with your 
head, all in good faith; notwithstanding that 
you are a tolerable carpenter, as well as his good 
Friend, and would use a hammer cheerfully in 
his service. This want of perception is a de- 
fect which all the virtues of the heart cannot 
supply. — 

The Good how can we trust? 

Only the Wise are just. 

The Good we use, 

The Wise we cannot choose. 

These there are none above; 

The Good they know and love, 

But are not known again 

By those of lesser ken. 

They do not charm us with their eyes, 

But they transfix with their advice; 

No partial sympathy they feel 

With private woe or private weal, 

But with the universe joy and sigh, 

Whose knowledge is their sympathy. 

Confucius said, "To contract ties of Friend- 
ship with any one, is to contract Friendship with 
his virtue. There ought not to be any other 
motive in Friendship." But men wish us to 
contract Friendship with their vice also. I 
have a Friend who wishes me to see that to be 
right which I know to be wrong. But if Friend- 
ship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to darken 
the day, I will have none of it. It should be 



352 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its 
effects. True Friendship can afford true knowl- 
edge. It does not depend on darkness and 
ignorance. A want of discernment cannot be 
an ingredient in it. If I can see my Friend's 
virtues more distinctly than another's, his 
faults too are made more conspicuous by con- 
trast. We have not so good a right to hate any 
as our Friend. Faults are not the less faults 
because they are invariably balanced by cor- 
responding virtues, and for a fault there is no 
excuse, though it may appear greater than it 
is in many ways. I have never known one who 
could bear criticism, who could not be nattered, 
who would not bribe his judge, or was content 
that the truth should be loved always better 
than himself. 

If two travellers would go their way har- 
moniously together, the one must take as true 
and just a view of things as the other, else their 
path will not be strewn with roses. Yet you can 
travel profitably and pleasantly even with a 
blind man, if he practises common courtesy, 
and when you converse about the scenery will 
remember that he is blind but that you can see; 
and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is 
probably quickened by his want of sight. Other- 
wise you will not long keep company. A blind 
man, and a man in whose eyes there was no 
defect, were walking together, when they came 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 353 

to the edge of a precipice, — "Take care! my 
friend," said the latter, "here is a steep preci- 
pice; go no further this way." — "I know 
better," said the other, and stepped off. 

It is impossible to say all that we think, even 
to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell 
forever sooner than complain, for our complaint 
is too well grounded to be uttered. There is 
not so good an understanding between any two, 
but the exposure by the one of a serious fault 
will produce a misunderstanding in proportion 
to its heinousness. The constitutional differ- 
ences which always exist, and are obstacles to a 
perfect Friendship, are forever a forbidden 
theme to the lips of Friends. They advise by 
their whole behavior. Nothing can reconcile 
them but love. They are fatally late when they 
undertake to explain and treat with one another 
like foes. Who will take an apology for a Friend? 
They must apologize like dew and frost, which 
are off again with the sun, and which all men 
know in their hearts to be beneficent. The 
necessity itself for explanation, — what explana- 
tion will atone for that? True love does not 
quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as 
mutual acquaintances can explain away, but 
alas, however slight the apparent cause, only 
for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, 
which can never be set aside. Its quarrel, if 
there is any, is ever recurring, notwithstanding 



354 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the beams of affection which invariably come 
to gild its tears ; as the rainbow, however beauti- 
ful and unerring a sign, does not promise fair 
weather forever, but only for a season. I have 
known two or three persons pretty well, and yet 
I have never known advice to be of use but in 
trivial and transient matters. One may know 
what another does not, but the utmost kindness 
cannot impart what is requisite to make the 
advice useful. We must accept or refuse one 
another as we are. I could tame a hyena more 
easily than my Friend. He is a material which 
no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will 
fell an oak with a fire-brand, and wear a hatchet 
out of the rock by friction, but I cannot hew 
the smallest chip out of the character of my 
Friend, either to beautify or deform it. 

The lover learns at last that there is no person 
quite transparent and trustworthy, but every 
one has a devil in him that is capable of any 
crime in the long run. Yet, as an oriental phil- 
osopher has said, "Although Friendship be- 
tween good men is interrupted, their principles 
remain unaltered. The stalk of the lotus may 
be broken, and the fibres remain connected." 

Ignorance and bungling with love are better 
than wisdom and skill without. There may be 
courtesy, there may be even temper, and wit, 
and talent, and sparkling conversation, there 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 355 

may be good-will even, — and yet the humanest 
and divinest faculties pine for exercise. Our life 
without love is like coke and ashes. Men may 
be pure as alabaster and Parian marble, elegant 
as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet 
if there is no milk mingled with the wine at their 
entertainments, better is the hospitality of 
Goths and Vandals. My Friend is not of some 
other race or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, 
bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see 
his nature groping yonder so like mine. We do 
not live far apart. Have not the fates asso- 
ciated us in many ways? Is it of no significance 
that we have so long partaken of the same loaf, 
drank at the same fountain, breathed the same 
air, summer and winter, felt the same heat and 
cold; that the same fruits have been pleased to 
refresh us both, and we have never had a thought 
of different fibre the one from the other! 

Nature doth have her dawn each day, 

But mine are far between; 
Content, I cry, for sooth to say, 

Mine brightest are I ween. 

For when my sun doth deign to rise, 

Though it be her noontide, 
Her fairest field in shadow lies, 

Nor can my light abide. 

Sometimes I bask me in her day, 

Conversing with my mate, 
But if we interchange one ray. 

Forthwith her heats abate. 



356 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Through his discourse I climb and see, 

As from some eastern hill, 
A brighter morrow rise to me 

Than lieth in her skill. 

As 't were two summer days in one, 

Two Sundays come together, 
Our rays united make one sun, 

With fairest summer weather. 

As surely as the sunset in ruy latest November 
shall translate me to the ethereal world, and re- 
mind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as 
surely as the last strain of music which falls on 
my decaying ear shall make age to be forgotten, 
or, in short, the manifold influences of nature 
survive during the term of our natural life,- so 
surely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, 
and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall 
foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, 
no less than the ruins of temples. As I love 
nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming 
stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and 
evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, 
my Friend. 

But all that can be said of Friendship, is like 
botany to flowers. How can the understanding- 
take account of its friendliness? 

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as 
much as their lives. They will leave consolation 
to the mourners, as the rich leave money to 
defray the expenses of their funerals, and their 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 357 

memories will be incrusted over with sublime 
and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are 
overgrown with moss. 

This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Alantic Friends. 

Also this other word of entreaty and advice to 
the large and respectable nation of Acquaint- 
ances, beyond the mountains; — Greeting. 

My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, 
let us see that we have the whole advantage of 
each other; we will be useful, at least, if not 
admirable, to one another. I know that the 
mountains which separate us are high, and 
covered with perpetual snow, but despair not. 
Improve the serene winter weather to scale 
them. If need be, soften the rocks with vinegar. 
For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready to 
receive you. Nor shall I be slow on my side to 
penetrate to your Provence. Strike then boldly 
at head or heart or any vital part. Depend 
upon it the timber is well seasoned and tough, 
and will bear rough usage; and if it should 
crack, there is plenty more where it came from. 
I am no piece of crockery that cannot be jostled 
against my neighbor without danger of being 
broken by the collision, and must needs ring 
false and jarringly to the end of my days, when 
once I am cracked; but rather one of the old 
fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while 
stands at the head of the table, and at another 



358 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

is a milking-stool, and at another a seat for 
children, and finally goes down to its grave not 
unadorned with honorable scars, and does not 
die till it is worn out. Nothing can shock a 
brave man but dulness. Think how many re- 
buffs every man has experienced in his day; 
perhaps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten 
fresh-water clams, or worn one shirt for a week 
without washing. Indeed, you cannot receive a 
shock unless you have an electric affinity for 
that which shocks you. Use me, then, for I am 
useful in my way, and stand as one of many 
petitioners, from toadstool and henbane up to 
dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put to my 
use, if by any means ye may find me service- 
able; whether for a medicated drink or bath, as 
balm and lavender; or for fragrance, as verbena 
and geranium; or for sight, as cactus; or for 
thoughts, as pansy. — These humbler, at least, 
if not those higher uses. 

Ah my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would 
not forget you. I can well afford to welcome 
you. Let me subscribe myself Yours ever and 
truly — your much obliged servant. We have 
nothing to fear from our foes; God keeps a 
standing army for that service; but we have no 
ally against our Friends, those ruthless Vandals. 

Once more to one and all, 

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 359 

Let such pure hate still underprop 
Our love, that we may be 
Each other's conscience, 
And have our sympathy 
Mainly from thence. 

We'll one another treat like gods, 
And all the faith we have 
In virtue and in truth, bestow 
On either, and suspicion leave 
To gods below. 

Two solitary stars — 
Unmeasured systems far 
Between us roll, 

But by our conscious light we are 
Determined to one pole. 

What need confound the sphere — 

Love can afford to wait, 

For it no hour 's too late 

That witnesseth one duty's end, 

Or to another doth beginning lend. 

It will subserve no use, 
More than the tints of flowers, 
Only the independent guest 
Frequents its bowers, 
Inherits its bequest. 

No speech though kind has it, 
But kinder silence doles 
Unto its mates, 
By night consoles, 
By day congratulates. 

What saith the tongue to tongue? 
What heareth ear of ear? 
By the decrees of fate 
From year to year, 
Does it communicate. 



360 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns — 
No trivial bridge of words, 
Or arch of boldest span, 
Can leap the moat that girds 
The sincere man. 



No show of bolts and bars 
Can keep the foeman out, 
Or 'scape his secret mine 
Who entered with the doubt 
That drew the line. 

No warder at the gate 
Can let the friendly in, 
But, like the sun, o'er all 
He will the castle win, 
And shine along the wall. 

There 's nothing in the world I know 
That can escape from love, 
For every depth it goes below, 
And every height above. 

It waits as waits the sky, 
Until the clouds go by, 
Yet shines serenely on 
With an eternal day, 
Alike when they are gone, 
And when they stay. 

Implacable is Love, — 
Foes may be bought or teazed 
From their hostile intent, 
But he goes unappeased 
Who is on kindness bent. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 361 

Having rowed five or six miles above Amos- 
keag before sunset, and reached a pleasant part 
of the river, one of us landed to look for a farm- 
house, where we might replenish our stores, 
while the other remained cruising about the 
stream, and exploring the opposite shores to 
find a suitable harbor for the night. In the 
meanwhile the canal boats began to come round 
a point in our rear, poling their way along close 
to the shore, the breeze having quite died away. 
This time there was no offer of assistance, but 
one of the boatmen only called out to say, as 
the truest revenge for having been the losers 
in the race, that he had seen a wood-duck, which 
we had scared up, sitting on a tall white-pine, 
half a mile down stream; and he repeated the 
assertion several times, and seemed really cha- 
grined at the apparent suspicion with which this 
information was received. But there sat the 
summer duck still undisturbed by us. 

By and by the other voyageur returned from 
his inland expedition, bringing one of the natives 
with him, a little flaxen-headed boy, with some 
tradition, or small edition, of Robinson Crusoe 
in his head, who had been charmed by the ac- 
count of our adventures, and asked his father's 
leave to join us. He examined, at first from the 
top of the bank, our boat and furniture, with 
sparkling eyes, and wished himself already his 
own man. He was a lively and interesting boy, 



362 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and we should have been glad to ship him; but 
Nathan was still his father's boy, and had not 
come to years of discretion. 

We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and 
musk and water-melons for dessert. For this 
farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, culti- 
vated a large patch of melons for the Hooksett 
and Concord markets. He hospitably enter- 
tained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields 
and kiln and melon patch, warning us to step 
over the tight rope which surrounded the latter 
at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to 
a little bower at the corner, where it connected 
with the lock of a gun ranging with the line, and 
where, as he informed us, he sometimes sat in 
pleasant nights to defend his premises against 
thieves. We stepped high over the line, and 
sympathized with our host's, on the whole quite 
human, if not humane, interest in the success 
of his experiment. That night especially thieves 
were to be expected, from rumors in the atmo- 
sphere, and the priming was not wet. He was 
a Methodist man, who had his dwelling between 
the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there 
belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the 
encouragement of distant political organiza- 
tions, and by his own tenacity, held a property 
in his melons, and continued to plant. We 
suggested melon seeds of new varieties and fruit 
of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 363 

had come away up here among the hills to learn 
the impartial and unbribable beneficence of 
Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well 
in one man's garden as another's, and the sun 
lodges as kindly under his hill-side, — when we 
had imagined that she inclined rather to some 
few earnest and faithful souls whom we know. 

We found a convenient harbor for our boat 
on the opposite or east shore, still in Hooksett, 
at the mouth of a small brook which emptied into 
the Merrimack, where it would be out of the 
way of any passing boat in the night, — for they 
commonly hug the shore if bound up stream, 
either to avoid the current, or touch the bottom 
with their poles, — and where it would be ac- 
cessible without stepping on the clayey shore. 
We set one of our largest melons to cool in the 
still water among the alders at the mouth of this 
creek, but when our tent was pitched and ready, 
and we went to get it, it had floated out into the 
stream and was nowhere to be seen. So taking 
the boat in the twilight, we went in pursuit of 
this property, and at length, after long straining 
of the eyes, its green disk was discovered far 
down the river, gently floating seaward with 
many twigs and leaves from the mountains that 
evening, and so perfectly balanced that it had 
not keeled at all, and no water had run in at 
the tap which had been taken out to hasten its 
cooling. 



364 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the 
clear light of the western sky fell on the eastern 
trees and was reflected in the water, and we 
enjoyed so serene an evening as left nothing to 
describe. For the most part we think that 
there are few degrees of sublimity, and that the 
highest is but little higher than that which we 
now behold; but we are always deceived. Sub- 
limer visions appear, and the former pale and 
fade away. We are grateful when we are re- 
minded by interior evidence, of the permanence 
of universal laws; for our faith is but faintly re- 
membered, indeed, is not a remembered assur- 
ance, but a use and enjoyment of knowledge. It 
is when we do not have to believe, but come into 
actual contact with Truth, and are related to her 
in the most direct and intimate way. Waves 
of serener life pass over us from time to time, 
like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy 
weather. In some happier moment, when more 
sap flows in the withered stalk of our life, Syria 
and India stretch away from our present as 
they do in history. All the events which make 
the annals of the nations are but the shadows of 
our private experiences. Suddenly and silently 
the eras which we call history awake and glim- 
mer in us, and there is room for Alexander and 
Hannibal to march and conquer. In other 
words, the history which we read is only a fainter 
memory of events which have happened in our 





/ 



Straight reach of river below Hooksett 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 365 

own experience. Tradition is a more interrupted 
and feebler memory. 

This world is but canvass to our imaginations. 
I see men with infinite pains endeavoring to 
realize to their bodies, what I, with at least 
equal pains, would realize to my imagination, — 
its capacities; for certainly there is a life of the 
mind above the wants of the body and inde- 
pendent of it. Often the body is warmed, but 
the imagination is torpid; the body is fat, but 
the imagination is lean and shrunk. But what 
avails all other wealth if this is wanting? " Ima- 
gination is the air of mind," in which it lives 
and breathes. All things are as I am. Where 
is the House of Change? The past is only so 
heroic as we see it. It is the canvass on which 
our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one 
sense, the dim prospectus of our future field. 
Our circumstances answer to our expectations 
and the demand of our natures. I have noticed 
that if a man thinks that he needs a thousand 
dollars, and cannot be convinced that he does 
not, he will commonly be found to have them, if 
he lives and thinks a thousand dollars will be 
forthcoming, though it be to buy shoe strings 
with. A thousand mills will be just as slow to 
come to one who finds it equally hard to con- 
vince himself that he needs them. 

Men are by birth equal in this, that given 
Themselves and their condition, they are even. 



366 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I am astonished at the singular pertinacity 
and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that 
what is is, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, 
for anything else to be; that we walk on in our 
particular paths so far, before we fall on death 
and fate, merely because we must walk in some 
path; that every man can get a living, and so 
few can do any more. So much only can I 
accomplish ere health and strength are gone, and 
yet this suffices. The bird now sits just out of 
gunshot. I am never rich in money, and I am 
never meanly poor. If debts are incurred, why, 
debts are in the course of events cancelled, as 
it were by the same law by which they were 
incurred. I heard that an engagement was 
entered into between a certain youth and a 
maiden, and then I heard that it was broken off, 
but I did not know the reason in either case. 
We are hedged about, we think, by accident 
and circumstance, now we creep as in a dream, 
and now again we run, as if there were a fate in 
it and all things thwarted or assisted. I can- 
not change my clothes but when I do, and yet 
I do change them, and soil the new ones. It is 
wonderful that this gets done, when some ad- 
mirable deeds which I could mention do not 
get done. Our particular lives seem of such 
fortune and confident strength and durability 
as piers of solid rock thrown forward into the 
tide of circumstance. When every other path 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 367 

would fail, with singular and unerring confidence 
we advance on our particular course. What 
risks we run ! famine and fire and pestilence, and 
the thousand forms of a cruel fate, — and yet 
every man lives till he — dies. How did he 
manage that? Is there no immediate danger? 
We wonder superfluously when we hear of a 
somnambulist walking a plank securely, — we 
have walked a plank all our lives up to this par- 
ticular string-piece where we are. My life will 
wait for nobody, but is being matured still 
without delay, while I go about the streets and 
chaffer with this man and that to secure a 
living. It is as indifferent and easy meanwhile 
as a poor man's dog, and making acquaintance 
with its kind. It will cut its own channel like 
a mountain stream, and by the longest ridge is 
not kept from the sea at last. I have found all 
things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, 
elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my 
resources. No matter what imprudent haste 
in my career; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs 
are bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen bag- 
gage train carried pontoons for my convenience, 
and while from the heights I scan the tempting 
but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the 
ship is being carried over the mountains piece- 
meal on the backs of mules and llamas, whose 
keel shall plow its waves and bear me to the 
Indies. Day would not dawn if it were not for 



368 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

THE INWARD MORNING 

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes 

Which outward nature wears, 
And in its fashion's hourly change 

It all tilings else repairs. 

In vain I look for change abroad, 

And can no difference find, 
Till some new ray of peace uncalled 

Illumes my inmost mind. 

What is it gilds the trees and clouds, 
And paints the heavens so gay, 

But yonder fast abiding light 
With its unchanging ray? 

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, 

Upon a winter's morn, 
Where'er his silent beams intrude 

The murky night is gone. 

How could the patient pine have known 
The morning breeze would come, 

Or humble flowers anticipate 
The insect's noonday hum, — 

Till the new light with morning cheer 
From far streamed through the aisles, 

And nimbly told the forest trees 
For many stretching miles? 

I've heard within my inmost soul 

Such cheerful morning news, 
In the horizon of my mind 

Have seen such orient hues, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 369 

As in the twilight of the dawn, 

When the first birds awake, 
Are heard within some silent wood, 

Where they the small twigs break, 

Or in the eastern skies are seen, 

Before the sun appears, 
The harbingers of summer heats 

Which from afar he bears. 

Whole weeks and months of my summer life 
slide away in thin volumes like mist and smoke, 
till at length, some warm morning, perchance, I 
see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the 
swamp, and I float as high above the fields with 
it. I can recall to mind the stillest summer 
hours, in which the grasshopper sings over the 
mulleins, and there is a valor in that time the 
bare memory of which is armor that can laugh 
at any blow of fortune. For our lifetime the 
strains of a harp are heard to swell and die 
alternately, and death is but "the pause when 
the blast is recollecting itself." 

We lay awake a long while, listening to the 
murmurs of the brook, in the angle formed by 
whose bank with the river our tent was pitched, 
and there was a sort of human interest in its 
story, which ceases not in freshet or in drought 
the livelong summer, and the profounder lapse 
of the river was quite drowned by its din. But 
the rill, whose 



370 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Silver sands and pebbles sing 
Eternal ditties with the spring," 

is silenced by the first frosts of winter, while 
mightier streams, on whose bottom the sun 
never shines, clogged with sunken rocks and the 
ruins of forests, from whose surface comes up no 
murmur, are strangers to the icy fetters which 
bind fast a thousand contributary rills. 

I dreamed this night of an event which had 
occurred long before. It was a difference with a 
Friend, which had not ceased to give me pain, 
though I had no cause to blame myself. But in 
my dream ideal justice was at length done me 
for his suspicions, and I received that compen- 
sation which I had never obtained in my waking 
hours. I was unspeakably soothed and rejoiced, 
even after I awoke, because in dreams we never 
deceive ourselves, nor are deceived, and this 
seemed to have the authority of a final judgment. 

We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams 
are divine, as well as some waking thoughts. 
Donne sings of one 

"Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray." 

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. 
We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember 
some un worthiness in our conduct in a dream, 
than if it had been actual, and the intensity of 
our grief, which is our atonement, measures 
inversely the degree by which this is separated 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 371 

from an actual un worthiness. For in dreams 
we but act a part which must have been learned 
and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt 
could discover some waking consent thereto. 
If this meanness has not its foundation in us, 
why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see 
ourselves naked and acting out our real char- 
acters, even more clearly than we see others 
awake. But an unwavering and commanding 
virtue would compel even its most fantastic 
and faintest dreams to respect its ever wakeful 
authority; as we are accustomed to say care- 
lessly, we should never have dreamed of such a 
thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams 
awake. 

"And, more to lull him in his slumber soft, 
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, 
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, 
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne. 
No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes, 
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, 
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes 
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes." 



372 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 



THURSDAY 

"He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone, 
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 

Where darkness found him he lay glad at night; 
There the red morning touched him with its light. 

***** 

Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome; 
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, 
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed." 

— Emerson. 

WHEN we awoke this morning, we heard 
the faint deliberate and ominous sound 
of rain drops on our cotton roof. The 
rain had pattered all night, and now the whole 
country wept, the drops falling in the river, and 
on the alders, and in the pastures, and instead 
of any bow in the heavens, there was the trill 
of the tree-sparrow all the morning. The cheery 
faith of this little bird atoned for the silence of 
the whole woodland quire besides. When we 
first stepped abroad, a flock of sheep, led by 
their rams, came rushing down a ravine in our 
rear, with heedless haste and unreserved frisk- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 373 

ing, as if unobserved by man, from some higher 
pasture where they had spent the night, to 
taste the herbage by the river-side; but when 
their leaders caught sight of our white tent 
through the mist, struck with sudden astonish- 
ment, with their fore feet braced, they sustained 
the rushing torrent in their rear, and the whole 
flock stood still, endeavoring to solve the mys- 
tery in their sheepish brains. At length, con- 
cluding that it boded no mischief to them, they 
spread themselves out quietly over the field. 
We learned afterward that we had pitched our 
tent on the very spot which a few summers 
before had been occupied by a party of Penob- 
scots. We could see rising before us through the 
mist a dark conical eminence called Hooksett 
Pinnacle, a landmark to boatmen, and also 
Uncannunuc Mountain, broad off on the west 
side of the river. 

This was the limit of our voyage, for a few 
hours more in the rain would have taken us 
to the last of the locks, and our boat was too 
heavy to be dragged around the long and numer- 
ous rapids which would occur. On foot, how- 
ever, we continued up along the bank, feeling 
our way with a stick through the showery and 
foggy day, and climbing over the slippery logs 
in our path with as much pleasure and buoyancy 
as in brightest sunshine; scenting the fragrance 
of the pines and the wet clay under our feet, 



374 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and cheered by the tones of invisible waterfalls; 
with visions of toadstools, and wandering frogs, 
and festoons of moss hanging from the spruce 
trees, and thrushes flitting silent under the leaves; 
our road still holding together through that 
wettest of weather, like faith, while we confi- 
dently followed its lead. We managed to keep 
our thoughts dry, however, and only our clothes 
were wet. It was altogether a cloudy and 
drizzling day, with occasional brightenings in 
the mist, when the trill of the tree-sparrow 
seemed to be ushering in sunny hours. 

" Nothing that naturally happens to man, 
can hurt him, earthquakes and thunder storms 
not excepted," said a man of genius, who at 
this time lived a few miles further on our road. 
When compelled by a shower to take shelter 
under a tree, we may improve that opportunity 
for a more minute inspection of some of Nature's 
works. I have stood under a tree in the woods 
half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the 
summer, and yet employed myself happily and 
profitably there prying with miscroscopic eye 
into the crevices of the bark or the leaves or the 
fungi at my feet. " Riches are the attendants 
of the miser: and the heavens rain plenteously 
upon the mountains." I can fancy that it 
would be a luxury to stand up to one's chin in 
some retired swamp a whole summer day, scent- 
ing the wild honeysuckle and bilberry blows, and 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 375 

lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosqui- 
toes ! A day passed in the society of those Greek 
sages, such as described in the Banquet of Xen- 
ophon, would not be comparable with the dry 
wet of decayed cranberry vines, and the fresh 
Attic salt of the moss-beds. Say twelve hours 
of genial and familiar converse with the leopard 
frog; the sun to rise behind alder and dogwood, 
and climb buoyantly to his meridian of two 
hands' breadth, and finally sink to rest behind 
some bold western hummock. To hear the 
evening chant cf the mosquito from a thousand 
green chapels, and the bittern begin to boom 
from some concealed fort like a sunset gun! — 
Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the 
juices of swamp for one day as pick his way 
dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp, — are 
they not as rich experience as warmth and dry- 
ness? 

At present, the drops come trickling down the 
stubble while we lie drenched on a bed of with- 
ered wild oats, by the side of a bushy hill, and 
the gathering in of the clouds, with the last rush 
and dying breath of the wind, and then the 
regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country 
over, enhance the sense of inward comfort and 
sociableness. The birds draw closer and are 
more familiar under the thick foliage, seemingly 
composing new strains upon their roosts against 
the sunshine. What were the amusements of 



376 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the drawing room and the library in compari- 
son, if we had them here? We should still 
sing as of old, — 

My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 
'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large 
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, 
And will not mind to hit their proper targe. 

Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, 
Our Shakspeare's life was rich to live again, 
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true, 
Nor Shakspeare's books, unless his books were men. 

Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, 
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, 
If juster battles are enacted now 
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown? 

Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn, 
If red or black the gods will favor most, 
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn, 
Struggling to heave some rock against the host. 

Tell Shakspeare to attend some leisure hour, 
For now I've business with this drop of dew, 
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, — 
I'll meet him shortly when the sky is blue. 

This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread 
Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use, 
A clover tuft is pillow for my head, 
And violets quite overtop my shoes. 

And now the cordial clouds have shut all in, 
And gently swells the wind to say all's well, 
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin, 
Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 377 

I am well drenched upon my bed of oats; 
But see that globe come rolling down its stem, 
Now like a lonely planet there it floats, 
And now it sinks into my garment's hem. 

Drip, drip the trees for all the country round, 
And richness rare distills from every bough, 
The wind alone it is makes every sound, 
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below. 

For shame the sun will never show himself, 
Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so, 
My dripping locks — they would become an elf, 
Who in a beaded coat does gaily go. 

The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises 
very abruptly to the height of about two hun- 
dred feet, near the shore at Hooksett Falls. 
As Uncannunuc Mountain is perhaps the best 
point from which to view the valley of the Merri- 
mack, so this hill affords the best view of the 
river itself. I have sat upon its summit, a 
precipitous rock only a few rods long, in fairer 
weather, when the sun was setting and filling 
the river valley with a flood of light. You can 
see up and down the Merrimack several miles 
each way. The broad and straight river, full 
of light and life, with its sparkling and foaming 
falls, the islet which divides the stream, the 
village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly 
under your feet, so near that you can converse 
with its inhabitants or throw a stone into its 
yards, the woodland lake at its western base, 



378 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and the mountains in the north and north-east, 
make a scene of rare beauty and completeness, 
which the traveller should take pains to behold. 

We were hospitably entertained in Concord in 
New Hampshire, which we persisted in calling 
New Concord, as we had been wont, to distin- 
guish it from our native town, from which we 
had been told that it was named and in part 
originally settled. This would have been the 
proper place to conclude our voyage, uniting 
Concord with Concord by these meandering 
rivers, but our boat was moored some miles 
below its port. 

The richness of the intervals at Penacook, 
now Concord in New Hampshire, had been 
observed by explorers, and, according to the 
historian of Haverhill, in the "year 1726, con- 
siderable progress was made in the settlement, 
and a road was cut through the wilderness from 
Haverhill to Penacook. In the fall of 1727, the 
first family, that of Capt. Ebenezer Eastman, 
moved into the place. His team was driven 
by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a Frenchman, 
and he is said to have been the first person who 
drove a team through the wilderness. Soon 
after, says tradition, one Ayer, a lad of 18, drove 
a team consisting of ten yoke of oxen to Pen- 
acook, swam the river, and plowed a portion 
of the interval. He is supposed to have been 
the first person who plowed land in that place. 




The Pinnacle 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 379 

After he had completed his work, he started on 
his return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen 
while recrossing the river, and arrived at Haver- 
hill about midnight. The crank of the first 
saw-mill was manufactured in Haverhill, and 
carried to Penacook on a horse." 

But we found that the frontiers were not this 
way any longer. This generation has come into 
the world fatally late for some enterprises. Go 
where we will on the surface of things, men have 
been there before us. We cannot now have 
the pleasure of erecting the last house; that was 
long ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria city, 
and our boundaries have literally been run to 
the South Sea, according to the old patents. 
But the lives of men, though more extended 
laterally in their range, are still as shallow as 
ever. Undoubtedly, as a western orator said, 
"men generally live over about the same sur- 
face; some live long and narrow, and others 
live broad and short; " but it is all superficial 
living. A worm is as good a traveller as a grass- 
hopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. 
With all their activity these do not hop away 
from drought nor forward to summer. We do 
not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising 
above or diving below its plane; as the worm 
escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches 
deeper. The frontiers are not east or west, north 
or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, 



380 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

though that fact be his neighbor, there is an 
unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, 
between him and the setting sun, or, further 
still, between him and it. Let him build him- 
self a log-house with the bark on where he is, 
fronting it, and wage there an Old French war 
for seven or seventy years, with Indians and 
Rangers, or whatever else may come between 
him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can. 

We now no longer sailed or floated on the 
river, but trod the unyielding land like pil- 
grims. Sadi tells who may travel; among 
others, — "A common mechanic, who can earn 
a subsistence by the industry of his hand, and 
shall not have to stake his reputation for every 
morsel of bread, as philosophers have said." 
— He may travel who can subsist on the wild 
fruits and game of the most cultivated country. 
A man may travel fast enough and earn his liv- 
ing on the road. I have frequently been applied 
to to do work when on a journey; to do tinkering 
and repair clocks, when I had a knapsack on 
my back. A man once applied to me to go into 
a factory, stating conditions and wages, observ- 
ing that I succeeded in shutting the window of a 
railroad car in which we were travelling, when 
the other passengers had failed. "Hast thou 
not heard of a Sufi, who was hammering some 
nails into the sole of his sandal; an officer of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 381 

cavalry took him by the sleeve, saying, come 
along and shoe my horse." Farmers have asked 
me to assist them in haying, when I was passing 
their fields. A man once applied to me to mend 
his umbrella, taking me for an umbrella mender, 
because, being on a journey, I carried an un- 
brella in my hand while the sun shone. Another 
wished to buy a tin cup of me, observing that 
I had one strapped to my belt, and a sauce-pan 
on my back. The cheapest way to travel, and 
the way to travel the furthest in the shortest 
distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a 
spoon, and a fish-line, some Indian meal, some 
salt, and some sugar. When you come to a 
brook or pond, you can catch fish and cook them; 
or you can boil a hasty-pudding; or you can buy 
a loaf of bread at a farmer's house for fourpence, 
moisten it in the next brook that crosses the 
road, and dip into it your sugar, — this alone will 
last you a whole day ; — or, if you are accustomed 
to heartier living, you can buy a quart of milk 
for two cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding 
into it, and eat it with your own spoon out of 
your own dish. Any one of these things I mean, 
not all together. I have travelled thus some 
hundreds of miles without taking any meal in 
a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, 
and found it cheaper, and in many respects more 
profitable, than staying at home. So that some 
have inquired why it would not be best to travel 



382 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

always. But I never thought of travelling 
simply as a means of getting a livelihood. A 
simple woman down in Tyngsboro', at whose 
house I once stopped to get a draught of water, 
when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had 
stopped there nine years before for the same 
purpose, asked if I was not a traveller, supposing 
that I had been travelling ever since, and had 
now come round again, that travelling was one 
of the professions, more or less productive, which 
her husband did not follow. But continued 
travelling is far from productive. It begins 
with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and 
making the feet sore, and ere long it will wear a 
man clean up, after making his heart sore into 
the bargain. I have observed that the after- 
life of those who have travelled much is very 
pathetic. True and sincere travelling is no pas- 
time, but it is as serious as the grave, or any other 
part of the human journey, and it requires a 
long probation to be broken into it. I do not 
speak of those that travel sitting, the sedentary 
travellers whose legs hang dangling the while, 
mere idle symbols of the fact, any more than 
when we speak of setting hens we mean those 
that sit standing, but I mean those to whom 
travelling is life for the legs. The traveller 
must be born again on the road, and earn a 
passport from the elements, the principal powers 
that be for him. He shall experience at last 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 383 

that old threat of his mother fulfilled, that he 
shall be skinned alive. His sores shall gradually 
deepen themselves that they may heal inwardly, 
while he gives no rest to the sole of his foot, and 
at night weariness must be his pillow, that so he 
may acquire experience against his rainy days. 
— So was it with us. 

Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, 
where trout-fishers from distant cities had arrived 
before us, and where, to our astonishment, the 
settlers dropped in at night-fall to have a chat 
and hear the news, though there was but one 
road, and no other house was visible, — as if they 
had come out of the earth. There we sometimes 
read old newspapers, who never before read new 
ones, and in the rustle of their leaves heard the 
dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore, 
instead of the sough of the wind amongthe pines. 
But then walking had given us an appetite even 
for the least palatable and nutritious food. 

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, 
which you have found it impossible to read at 
home, but for which you have still a lingering 
regard, is the best to carry with you on a jour- 
ney. At a country inn, in the barren society 
of ostlers and travellers, I could undertake the 
writers of the silver or the brazen age with con- 
fidence. Almost the last regular service which 
I performed in the cause of literature was to 
read the works of 



384 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 



AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS 

If you have imagined what a divine work is 
spread out for the poet, and approach this 
author too, in the hope of finding the field at 
length fairly entered on, ycu will hardly dissent 
from the words of the prologue, 

"Ipse semipaganus 
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum." 

I half pagan 
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets. 

Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, 
nor the elegance and vivacity of Horace, nor 
will any sybil be needed to remind you, that from 
those older Greek poets there is a sad descent 
to Persius. You can scarcely distinguish one 
harmonious sound amid this unmusical bick- 
ering with the follies of men. 

One sees that music has its place in thought, 
but hardly as yet in language. When the Muse 
arrives, we wait for her to remould language, 
and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the 
verse groans and labors with its load, and goes 
not forward blithely, singing by the way. The 
best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a 
parody, and has a poor and trivial sound, like 
a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. 
Homer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Mar- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 385 

vel, and Wordsworth, are but the rustling of 
leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and 
there is not yet the sound of any bird. The 
Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. 
Most of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal 
or Persius do not marry music to their verse, 
but are measured fault-finders at best; stand 
but just outside the faults they condemn, and 
so are concerned rather about the monster 
which they have escaped, than the fair pros- 
pect before them. Let them live on an age, 
and they will have travelled out of his shadow 
and reach, and found other objects to ponder. 

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it 
were, particeps criminis. One sees not but he 
had best let bad take care of itself, and have 
to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If 
you light on the least vestige of truth, and it is 
the weight of the whole body still which stamps 
the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to 
extol it, while no evil is so huge, but you grudge 
to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth 
never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own 
straightforwardness is the severest correction. 
Horace would not have written satire so well if 
he had not been inspired by it, as by a passion, 
and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the 
love always exceeds the hate, so that the severest 
satire still sings itself, and the poet is satisfied, 
though the folly be not corrected. 



386 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

A sort of necessary order in the development 
of Genius is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; 
third, Love. Complaint, which is the condition 
of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. 
Ere long the enjoyment of a superior good 
would have changed his disgust into regret. We 
can never have much sympathy with the corn- 
plainer; for after searching nature through, we 
conclude that he must be both plaintiff and 
defendant too, and so had best come to a settle- 
ment without a hearing. He who receives an 
injury is to some extent an accomplice of the 
wrong doer. 

Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the 
highest strain of the muse is essentially plaintive. 
The saint's are still tears of joy. Who has ever 
heard the Innocent sing? 

But the di vines t poem, or the life of a great 
man, is the severest satire; as impersonal as 
Nature herself, and like the sighs of her winds in 
the woods, which convey ever a slight reproof 
to the hearer. The greater the genius, the 
keener the edge of the satire. 

Hence we have to do only with the rare and 
fragmentary traits, which least belong to Persius, 
or shall we say, are the properest utterances of 
his muse; since that which he says best at any 
time is what he can best say at all times. The 
Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to cull 
some quotable sentences from this garden too, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 387 

so pleasant is it to meet even the most familiar 
truth in a new dress, when, if our neighbor had 
said it, we should have passed it by as hack- 
neyed. Out of these six satires, you may per- 
haps select some twenty lines, which fit so well 
as many thoughts, that they will recur to the 
scholar almost as readily as a natural image; 
though when translated into familiar language, 
they lose that insular emphasis, which fitted 
them for quotation. Such lines as the follow- 
ing, translation cannot render common-place. 
Contrasting the man of true religion with those 
who, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on 
a secret commerce with the gods, he says, — 

"Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros, 
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto." 

It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low 
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow. 

To the virtuous man, the universe is the only 
sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the 
temple are the broad noon of his existence. 
Why should he betake himself to a subterranean 
crypt, as if it were the only holy ground in all 
the world which he had left unprofaned? The 
obedient soul would only the more discover 
and familiarize things, and escape more and 
more into light and air, as having henceforth 
done with secrecy, so that the universe shall 
not seem open enough for it. At length, it is 



388 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

neglectful even of that silence which is consistent 
with true modesty, but by its independence of 
all confidence in its disclosures, makes that 
which it imparts so private to the hearer, that 
it becomes the care of the whole world that 
modesty be not infringed. 

To the man who cherishes a secret in his 
breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. 
Our most indifferent acts may be matter for 
secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost 
truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its 
pureness, must be transparent as light. 

In the third satire, he asks, 

"Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum? 
An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove, 
Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?" 

Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which 

thou directest thy bow? 
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay, 
Careless wliither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore? 

The bad sense is always a secondary one. 
Language does not appear to have justice done 
it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in 
its significance, when any meanness is described. 
The truest construction is not put upon it. 
What may readily be fashioned into a rule of 
wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the 
sluggard, and constitutes the front of his offence. 
Universally, the innocent man will come forth 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 389 

from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing, the 
combined din of reproof and commendation, 
with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our 
vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, 
and in their best estate are but plausible imita- 
tions of the latter. Falsehood never attains to 
the dignity of entire falseness, but is only an 
inferior sort of truth ; if it were more thoroughly 
false, it would incur danger of becoming true. 

"Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit," 

is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as 
the subtle discernment of the language would 
have taught us, with all his negligence he is still 
secure; but the sluggard, notwithstanding his 
heedlessness, is insecure. 

The life of a wise man is most of all extem- 
poraneous, for he lives out of an eternity which 
includes all time. The cunning mind travels 
farther back than Zoroaster each instant, and 
comes quite down to the present with its revela- 
tion. The utmost thrift and industry of think- 
ing give no man any stock in life; his credit 
with the inner world is no better, his capital no 
larger. He must try his fortune again to-day 
as yesterday. All questions rely on the present 
for their solution. Time measures nothing but 
itself. The word that is written may be post- 
poned, but not that on the lip. If this is what 
the occasion says, let the occasion say it. All 



390 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the world is forward to prompt him who gets 
up to live without his creed in his pocket. 

In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find, — 

"Stat contra ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem, 
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo." 

Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear, 

That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing. 

Only they who do not see how anything might 
be better done, are forward to try their hand on 
it. Even the master workman must be en- 
couraged by the reflection, that his awkward- 
ness will be incompetent to do that thing harm, 
to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here 
is no apology for neglecting to do many things 
from a sense of our incapacity, — for what 
deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from 
our hands? — but only a warning to bungle less. 
The satires of Persius are the farthest possible 
from inspired; evidently a chosen, not imposed 
subject. Perhaps I have given him credit for 
more earnestness than is apparent; but it is 
certain, that that which alone we can call 
Persius, which is forever independent and con- 
sistent, was in earnest, and so sanctions the 
sober consideration of all. The artist and his 
work are not to be separated. The most wil- 
fully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his 
folly, but the deed and the doer together make 
ever one sober fact. There is but one stage for 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 391 

the peasant and the actor. The buffoon cannot 
bribe you to laugh always at his grimaces; they 
shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian granite, 
to stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground 
of his character. 

Suns rose and set and found us still on the 
dank forest path which meanders up the Pemige- 
wasset, now more like an otter's or a marten's 
trail, or where a beaver had dragged his trap, 
than where the wheels of travel raise a dust; 
where towns begin to serve as gores, only to 
hold the earth together. The wild pigeon sat 
secure above our heads, high on the dead limbs 
of naval pines, reduced to a robin's size. The 
very yards of our hostelries inclined upon the 
skirts of mountains, and, as we passed, we 
looked up at a steep angle at the stems of 
maples waving in the clouds. 

Far up in the country, — for we would be 
faithful to our experience, — in Thornton, per- 
haps, we met a soldier lad in the woods, going 
to muster in full regimentals, and holding the 
middle of the road; deep in the forest with 
shouldered musket and military step, and 
thoughts of war and glory all to himself. It was 
a sore trial to the youth, tougher than many a 
battle, to get by us creditably and with soldier- 
like bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered 
like a reed in his thin military pants, and by the 



392 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

time we had got up with him, all the sternness 
that becomes the soldier had forsaken his face, 
and he skulked past as if he were driving his 
father's sheep under a sword-proof helmet. It 
was too much for him to carry any extra armor 
then, who could not easily dispose of his natural 
arms. And for his legs, they were like heavy 
artillery in boggy places; better to cut the 
traces and forsake them. His greaves chafed 
and wrestled one with another for want of other 
foes. But he did get by and get off with all his 
munitions, and lived to fight another day; and 
I do not record this as casting any suspicion 
on his honor and real bravery in the field. 

Wandering on through notches which the 
streams had made, by the side and over the 
brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the 
stumpy, rocky, forested and bepastured coun- 
try, we at length crossed on prostrate trees over 
the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of 
Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair days as 
well as foul, we had traced up the river to which 
our native stream is a tributary, until from 
Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that 
leaped by our side, and when we had passed its 
fountainhead, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose 
puny channel was crossed at a stride, guiding us 
toward its distant source among the mountains, 
and at length, without its guidance, we were 
enabled to reach the summit of Agiocochook. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 393 

"Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky, 
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 
For thou must die." 

— Herbert. 

When we returned to Hooksett, a week after- 
ward, the melon man, in whose corn-barn we 
had hung our tent and buffaloes and other 
things to dry, was already picking his hops, 
with many women and children to help him. 
We bought one watermelon, the largest in his 
patch, to carry with us for ballast. It was 
Nathan's, which he might sell if he pleased, 
having been conveyed to him in the green 
state, and owned daily by his eyes. After due 
consultation with "Father," the bargain was 
concluded, — we to buy it at a venture on the 
vine, green or ripe, our risk, and pay "what 
the gentlemen pleased." It proved to be ripe; 
for we had had honest experience in selecting 
this fruit. 

Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under 
Uncannunuc Mountain, with a fair wind and 
the current in our favor, we commenced our voy- 
age at noon, sitting at our ease and conversing, 
or in silence watching for the last trace of each 
reach in the river as a bend concealed it from 
our view. As the season was further advanced, 
the wind now blew steadily from the north, and 
with our sail set we could occasionally He on 



394 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

our oars without loss of time. The lumbermen 
throwing down wood from the top of the high 
bank, thirty or forty feet above the water, that 
it might be sent down stream, paused in their 
work to watch our retreating sail. By this time, 
indeed, we were well known to the boatmen, 
and were hailed as the Revenue Cutter of the 
stream. As we sailed rapidly down the river, 
shut in between two mounds of earth, the sound 
of this timber rolled down the bank enhanced 
the silence and vastness of the noon, and we 
fancied that only the primeval echoes were 
awakened. The vision of a distant scow just 
heaving in sight round a headland, also in- 
creased by contrast the solitude. 

Through the din and desultoriness of noon, 
even in the most oriental city, is seen the fresh 
and primitive and savage nature, in which 
Scythians, and Ethiopians, and Indians dwell. 
What is echo, what are light and shade, day 
and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and 
eclipse, there? The works of man are every- 
where swallowed up in the immensity of Nature. 
The iEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the 
Indian. Also there is all the refinement of 
civilized life in the woods under a sylvan garb. 
The wildest scenes have an air of domesticity 
and homeliness even to the citizen, and when 
the flicker's cackle is heard in the clearing, he 
is reminded that civilization has wrought but 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 395 

little change there. Science is welcome to the 
deepest recesses of the forest, for there too 
nature obeys the same old civil laws. The little 
red bug on the stump of a pine, for it the wind 
shifts and the sun breaks through the clouds. 
In the wildest nature, there is not only the 
material of the most cultivated life, and a sort 
of anticipation of the last result, but a greater 
refinement already than is ever attained by 
man. There is papyrus by the river-side, and 
rushes for light, and the goose only flies over- 
head, ages before the studious are born or letters 
invented, and that literature which the former 
suggest, and even from the first have rudely 
served, it may be man does not yet use them 
to express. Nature is prepared to welcome into 
her scenery the finest work of human art, for 
she is herself an art so cunning that the artist 
never appears in his work. 

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the 
ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art 
would also be wild or natural in a good sense. 
Man tames Nature only that he may at last 
make her more free even than he found her, 
though he may never yet have succeeded. 

With this propitious breeze, and the help of 
our oars, we soon reached the Falls of Amoskeag, 
and the mouth of the Piscataquoag, and recog- 
nized, as we swept rapidly by, many a fair bank 



396 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and islet on which our eyes had rested in the 
upward passage. Our boat was like that which 
Chaucer describes in his Dream, in which the 
knight took his departure from the island, 

"To journey for his marriage, 
And return with such an host, 
That wedded might be least and most. * * 
Which barge was as a man's thought, 
After his pleasure to him brought, 
The queene herself accustomed aye 
In the same barge to play, 
It needed neither mast ne rother, 
I have not heard of such another, 
No master for the goverance, 
Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce 
Without labor east and west, 
All was one, calme or tempest." 

So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the saying 
of Pythagoras, though we had no peculiar 
right to remember it, — "It is beautiful when 
prosperity is present with intellect, and when 
sailing as it were with a prosperous wind, actions 
are performed looking to virtue; just as a pilot 
looks to the motions of the stars." All the world 
reposes in beauty to him who preserves equi- 
poise in his life, and moves serenely on his path 
without secret violence; as he who sails down 
a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark 
in the middle, and carry it round the falls. The 
ripples curled away in our wake, like ringlets 
from the head of a child, while we steadily held 
on our course, and under the bows we watched 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 397 

"The swaying soft, 
Made by the delicate wave parted in front, 
As through the gentle element we move 
Like shadows gliding through untroubled dreams." 

The forms of beauty fall naturally around the 
path of him who is in the performance of his 
proper work; as the curled shavings drop from 
the plane, and borings cluster round the auger. 
Undulation is the gentlest and most ideal of mo- 
tions, produced by one fluid falling on another. 
Rippling is a more graceful flight. From a hill- 
top you may detect in it the wings of birds 
endlessly repeated. The two waving lines which 
represent the flight of birds appear to have been 
copied from the ripple. 

The trees made an admirable fence to the 
landscape, skirting the horizon on every side. 
The single trees and the groves left standing 
on the interval, appeared naturally disposed, 
though the farmer had consulted only his con- 
venience, for he too falls into the scheme of 
Nature. Art can never match the luxury and 
superfluity of Nature. In the former all is 
seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is 
niggardly in comparison; but Nature, even 
when she is scant and thin outwardly, satis- 
fies us still by the assurance of a certain gener- 
osity at the roots. In swamps, where there is 
only here and there an evergreen tree amid 
the quaking moss and cranberry beds, the bare- 



398 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ness does not suggest poverty. The double- 
spruce, which I had hardly noticed in gardens, 
attracts me in such places, and now first I under- 
stand why men try to make them grow about 
their houses. But though there may be very 
perfect specimens in front-yard plots, their 
beauty is for the most part ineffectual there, 
for there is no such assurance of kindred wealth 
beneath and around them to make them show 
to advantage. As we have said, Nature is a 
greater and more perfect art, the art of God; 
though, referred to herself, she is genius, and 
there is a similarity between her operations and 
man's art even in the details and trifles. When 
the overhanging pine drops into the water, by 
the sun and water, and the wind rubbing it 
against the shore, its boughs are worn into fan- 
tastic shapes, and white and smooth, as if turned 
in a lathe. Man's art has wisely imitated those 
forms into which all matter is most inclined to 
run, as foliage and fruit. A hammock swung 
in a grove assumes the exact form of a canoe, 
broader or narrower, and higher or lower at the 
ends, as more or fewer persons are in it, and it 
rolls in the air with the motion of the body, 
like a canoe in the water. Our art leaves its 
shavings and its dust about; her art exhibits 
itself even in the shavings and the dust which 
we make. She has perfected herself by an eter- 
nity of practice. The world is well kept; no 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 399 

rubbish accumulates; the morning air is clear 
even at this day, and no dust has settled on the 
grass. Behold how the evening now steals over 
the fields, the shadows of the trees creeping 
further and further into the meadow, and ere 
long the stars will come to bathe in these retired 
waters. Her undertakings are secure and never 
fail. If I were awakened from a deep sleep, I 
should know which side of the meridian the sun 
might be by the aspect of nature, and by the 
chirp of the crickets, and yet no painter can 
paint this difference. The landscape contains 
a thousand dials which indicate the natural 
divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand 
styles point to the hour. — 

"Not only o'er the dial's face, 

This silent phantom day by day, 
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace, 

Steals moments, months, and years away; 
From hoary rock and aged tree, 

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls, 
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea, 

From every blade of grass it falls." 

It is almost the only game which the trees play 
at, this tit-for-tat, now this side in the sun, now 
that, the drama of the day. In deep ravines 
under the eastern sides of cliffs, Night forwardly 
plants her foot even at noonday, and as Day 
retreats she steps into his trenches, skulking 
from tree to tree, from fence to fence, until at 



400 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

last she sits in his citadel and draws out her 
forces into the plain. It may be that the fore- 
noon is brighter than the afternoon, not only 
because of the greater transparency of its atmo- 
sphere, but because we naturally look most into 
the west, as forward into the day, and so in the 
forenoon see the sunny side of things, but in the 
afternoon the shadow of every tree. 

The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh 
and leisurely wind is blowing over the river, 
making long reaches of bright ripples. The 
river has done its stint, and appears not to flow, 
but lie at its length reflecting the light, and the 
haze over the woods is like the inaudible panting, 
or rather the gentle perspiration of resting nature, 
rising from a myriad of pores into the attenuated 
atmosphere. 

On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred 
and forty-two years before this, probably about 
this time in the afternoon, there were hurriedly 
paddling down this part of the river, between 
the pine woods which then fringed these banks, 
two white women and a boy, who had left an 
island at the mouth of the Contoocook before 
daybreak. They were slightly clad for the 
season, in the English fashion, and handled 
their paddles unskilfully, but with nervous 
energy and determination, and at the bottom 
of their canoe lay the still bleeding scalps of ten 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 401 

of the aborigines. They were Hannah Dustan, 
and her nurse, Mary Neff, both of Haverhill, 
eighteen miles from the mouth of this river, and 
an English boy, named Samuel Lennardson, 
escaping from captivity among the Indians. 
On the 15th of March previous, Hannah Dustan 
had been compelled to rise from childbed, and 
half -dressed, with one foot bare, accompanied by 
her nurse, commence an uncertain march, in 
still inclement weather, through the snow and 
the wilderness. She had seen her seven elder 
children flee with their father, but knew not of 
their fate. She had seen her infant's brains 
dashed out against an apple tree, and had left 
her own and her neighbors' dwellings in ashes. 
When she reached the wigwam of her captor, 
situated on an island in the Merrimack, more 
than twenty miles above where we now are, 
she had been told that she and her nurse were 
soon to be taken to a distant Indian settlement, 
and there made to run the gauntlet naked. 
The family of this Indian consisted of two men, 
three women, and seven children, beside an 
English boy, whom she found a prisoner among 
them. Having determined to attempt her es- 
cape, she instructed the boy to inquire of one 
of the men, how he should despatch an enemy 
in the quickest manner, and take his scalp. 
" Strike 'em there," said he, placing his finger 
on his temple, and he also showed him how to 



402 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

take off the scalp. On the morning of the 31st 
she arose before daybreak, and awoke her nurse 
and the boy, and taking the Indians ' tomahawks, 
they killed them all in their sleep, excepting one 
favorite boy, and one squaw who fled wounded 
with him to the woods. The English boy 
struck the Indian who had given him the infor- 
mation on the temple, as he had been directed. 
They then collected all the provision they could 
find, and took their master's tomahawk and 
gun, and scuttling all the canoes but one, com- 
menced their flight to Haverhill, distant about 
sixty miles by the river. But after having pro- 
ceeded a short distance, fearing that her story 
would not be believed if she should escape to 
tell it, they returned to the silent wigwam, and 
taking off the scalps of the dead, put them into 
a bag as proofs of what they had done, and then 
retracing their steps to the shore in the twilight, 
recommenced their voyage. 

Early this morning this deed was performed, 
and now, perchance, these tired women and this 
boy, their clothes stained with blood, and their 
minds racked with alternate resolution and fear, 
are making a hasty meal of parched corn and 
moose meat, while their canoe glides under 
these pine roots whose stumps are still standing 
on the bank. They are thinking of the dead 
whom they have left behind on that solitary 
isle far up the stream, and of the relentless 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 403 

living warriors who are in pursuit. Every 
withered leaf which the winter has left seems to 
know their story, and in its rustling to repeat 
it and betray them. An Indian lurks behind 
every rock and pine, and their nerves cannot 
bear the tapping of a woodpecker. Or they 
forget their own dangers and their deeds in con- 
jecturing the fate of their kindred, and whether, 
if they escape the Indians, they shall find the 
former still alive. They do not stop to cook 
their meals upon the bank, nor land, except 
to carry their canoe about the falls. The stolen 
birch forgets its master and does them good 
service, and the swollen current bears them 
swiftly along with little need of the paddle, ex- 
cept to steer and keep them warm by exercise. 
For ice is floating in the river; the spring is 
opening; the muskrat and the beaver are driven 
out of their holes by the flood; deer gaze at 
them from the bank; a few faint-singing forest 
birds, perchance, fly across the river to the north- 
ernmost shore; the fish-hawk sails and screams 
overhead, and geese fly over with a startling 
clangor; but they do not observe these things, 
or they speedily forget them. They do not 
smile or chat all day. Sometimes they pass 
an Indian grave surrounded by its paling on the 
bank, or the frame of a wigwam, with a few coals 
left behind, or the withered stalks still rustling 
in the Indian's solitary corn-field on the inter- 



404 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

val. The birch stripped of its bark, or the char- 
red stump where a tree has been burned down 
to be made into a canoe, these are the only traces 
of man, — a fabulous wild man to us. On either 
side, the primeval forest stretches away uninter- 
rupted to Canada or to the "South Sea"; to 
the white man a drear and howling wilderness, 
but to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, 
and cheerful as the smile of the Great Spirit. 

While we loiter here this autumn evening, 
looking for a spot retired enough, where we shall 
quietly rest to-night, they thus, in that chilly 
March evening, one hundred and forty-two 
years before us, with wind and current favoring, 
have already glided out of sight, not to camp, as 
we shall, at night, but while two sleep one will 
manage the canoe, and the swift stream bear 
them onward to the settlements, it may be, 
even to old John Lovewell's house on Salmon 
Brook to-night. 

According to the historian, they escaped as 
by a miracle all roving bands of Indians, and 
reached their homes in safety, with their tro- 
phies, for which the General Court paid them 
fifty pounds. The family of Hannah Dustan 
all assembled alive once more, except the infant 
whose brains were dashed out against the apple 
tree, and there have been many who in later 
times have lived to say that they had eaten of 
the fruit of that apple tree. 





A glimpse of Litchfield 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 405 

This seems a long while ago, and yet it hap- 
pened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. 
But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for 
we do not regulate our historical time by the 
English standard, nor did the English by the 
Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek. "We 
must look a long way back," says Raleigh, "to 
find the Romans giving laws to nations, and 
their consuls bringing kings and princes bound 
in chains to Rome in triumph; to see men go 
to Greece for wisdom, or Ophir for gold; when 
now nothing remains but a poor paper remem- 
brance of their former condition." — And yet, 
in one sense, not so far back as to find the Pena- 
cooks and Pawtuckets using bows and arrows 
and hatchets of stone, on the banks of the 
Merrimack. From this September afternoon, 
and from between these now cultivated shores, 
those times seem more remote than the dark 
ages. On beholding an old picture of Concord, 
as it appeared but seventy-five years ago, with 
a fair, open prospect and a light on trees and 
river, as if it were broad noon, I find that I 
had not thought the sun shone in those days, or 
that men lived in broad daylight then. Still 
less do we imagine the sun shining on hill and 
valley during Philip's war, on the warpath of 
Church or Philip, or later of Lovewell or Paugus, 
with serene summer weather, but they must 
have lived and fought in a dim twilight or night. 



406 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The age of the world is great enough for our 
imaginations, even according to the Mosaic 
account, without borrowing any years from the 
geologist. From Adam and Eve at one leap 
sheer down to the deluge, and then through the 
ancient monarchies, through Babylon and 
Thebes, Brahma and Abraham, to Greece and 
the Argonauts; whence we might start again with 
Orpheus and the Trojan war, the Pyramids 
and the Olympic games, and Homer and Athens, 
for our stages; and after a breathing space at 
the building of Rome, continue our journey 
down through Odin and Christ to — America. 
It is a wearisome while. — And yet the lives of 
but sixty old women, such as live under the hill, 
say of a century each, strung together, are 
sufficient to reach over the whole ground. 
Taking hold of hands they would span the inter- 
val from Eve to my own mother. A respectable 
tea-party merely, — whose gossip would be Uni- 
versal History. The fourth old woman from 
myself suckled Columbus, — the ninth was nurse 
to the Norman Conqueror, — the nineteenth was 
the Virgin Mary, — the twenty-fourth the Cum- 
sean Sibyl, — the thirtieth was at the Trojan 
war and Helen her name, — the thirty-eighth 
was Queen Semiramis, — the sixtieth was Eve 
the mother of mankind. So much for the 

— "old woman that lives under the hill, 
And if she 's not gone she lives there still." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 407 

It will not take a very great grand-daughter 
of hers to be in at the death of time. 

We can never safely exceed the actual facts 
in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as 
some suppose, there is no instance. To write 
a true work of fiction even, is only to take 
leisure and liberty to describe some things more 
exactly as they are. A true account of the 
actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense 
always takes a hasty and superficial view. 
Though I am not much acquainted with the 
works of Goethe, I should say that it was one of 
his chief excellencies as a writer, that he is satis- 
fied with giving an exact description of things 
as they appear to him, and their effect upon him. 
Most travellers have not self-respect enough to 
do this simply, and make objects and events 
stand around them as the centre, but still 
imagine more favorable positions and relations 
than the actual ones, and so we get no valuable 
report from them at all. In his Italian Travels 
Goethe jogs along at a snail 's pace, but always 
mindful that the earth is beneath and the heav- 
ens are above him. His Italy is not merely the 
fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene 
of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily 
shined on by the sun, and nightly by the moon. 
Even the few showers are faithfully recorded. 
He speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose 
object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and 



408 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

that, for the most part, in the order in which he 
sees it. Even his reflections do not interfere 
with his descriptions. In one place he speaks 
of himself as giving so glowing and truthful a 
description of an old tower to the peasants who 
had gathered around him, that they who had 
been born and brought up in the neighborhood 
must needs look over their shoulders, "that," 
to use his own words, "they might behold with 
their eyes, what I had praised to their ears" — 
"and I added nothing, not even the ivy which 
for centuries had decorated the walls." It 
would thus be possible for inferior minds to 
produce invaluable books, if this very modera- 
tion were not the evidence of superiority; for 
the wise are not so much wiser than others as 
respecters of their own wisdom. Some, poor 
in spirit, record plaintively only what has 
happened to them; but others how they have 
happened to the universe, and the judgment 
which they have awarded to circumstances. 
Above all, he possessed a hearty good-will to 
all men, and never wrote a cross or even care- 
less word. On one occasion the post-boy snivel- 
ling "Signor perdonate, questa e lamia patria, " 
he confesses that "to me poor northerner came 
something tear-like into the eyes." 

Goethe's whole education and life were those 
of the artist. He lacks the unconsciousness of 
the poet. In his autobiography he describes 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 409 

accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm 
Meister. For as there is in that book, mingled 
with a rare and serene wisdom, a certain petti- 
ness or exaggeration of trifles, wisdom applied 
to produce a constrained and partial and merely 
well-bred man, — a magnifying of the theatre 
till life itself is turned into a stage, for which 
it is our duty to study our parts well, and con- 
duct with propriety and precision, — so in the 
autobiography, the fault of his education is, so 
to speak, its artistic completeness. Nature is 
hindered, though she prevails at last in making 
an unusually catholic impression on the boy. 
It is the life of a city boy, whose toys are pic- 
tures and works of art, whose wonders are the 
theatre and kingly processions and crownings. 
As the youth studied minutely the order and 
the degrees in the imperial procession, and suf- 
fered none of its effect to be lost on him; so the 
man aimed to secure a rank in society which 
would satisfy his notion of fitness and respec- 
tability. He was defrauded of much which the 
savage boy enjoys. Indeed he himself has 
occasion to say in this very autobiography, when 
at last he escapes into the woods without the 
gates, — "Thus much is certain, that only the 
undefinable, wide-expanding feelings of youth 
and of uncultivated nations are adapted to the 
sublime, which whenever it may be excited in 
us through external objects, since it is either 



410 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

formless, or else moulded into forms which are 
incomprehensible, must surround us with a 
grandeur which we find above our reach." He 
further says of himself, — "I had lived among 
painters from my childhood, and had accustomed 
myself to look at objects as they did, with refer- 
ence to art." And this was his practice to the 
last. He was even too well-bred to be thor- 
oughly bred. He says that he had had no inter- 
course with the lowest class of his towns-boys. 
The child should have the advantage of ignor- 
ance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate 
if he gets his share of neglect and exposure. — 

"The laws of Nature break the rules of Art." 

The Man of Genius may at the same time 
be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the 
two are not to be confounded. The Man of 
Genius, referred to mankind, is an originator, 
an inspired or demonic man, who produces a 
perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. 
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law 
from observation of the works of Genius, whether 
of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely 
applies the rules which others have detected. 
There has been no man of pure Genius; as there 
has been none wholly destitute of Genius. 

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind. 

The expressions of the poet cannot be ana- 
lyzed; his sentence is one word, whose syllables 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 411 

are words. There are indeed no words quite 
worthy to be set to his music. But what matter 
if we do not hear the words always, if we hear 
the music? 

Much verse fails of being poetry because it 
was not written exactly at the right crisis, 
though it may have been inconceivably near to 
it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written 
at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a 
hue caught from a vaster receding thought. 

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expres- 
sion fallen ripe into literature, and it is undivid- 
edly and unimpededly received by those for 
whom it was matured. 

If you can speak what you will never hear, — 
if you can write what you will never read, you 
have done rare things. 

The work we choose should be our own, 
God lets alone. 

The unconsciousness of man is the conscious- 
ness of God. 

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even' 
stone walls have their foundation below the 
frost. 

What is produced by a free stroke charms us, 
like the forms of lichens and leaves. There is 
a certain perfection in accident which we never 
consciously attain. Draw a blunt quill filled 
with ink over a sheet of paper, and fold the 



412 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

paper before the ink is dry, transversely to this 
line, and a delicately shaded and regular figure 
will be produced, in some respects more pleas- 
ing than an elaborate drawing. 

The talent of composition is very dangerous, — 
the striking out the heart of life at a blow, as 
the Indian takes off a scalp. I feel as if my 
life had grown more outward when I can express 
it. 

On his journey from Brenner to Verona, 
Goethe writes, "The Tees flows now more gently, 
and makes in many places broad sands. On 
the land, near to the water, upon the hill-sides, 
everything is so closely planted one to another, 
that you think they must choke one another, — 
vineyards, maize, mulberry trees, apples, pears, 
quinces, and nuts. The dwarf elder throws itself 
vigorously over the walls. Ivy grows with strong 
stems up the rocks, and spreads itself wide 
over them, the lizard glides through the inter- 
vals, and everything that wanders to and fro 
reminds one of the loveliest pictures of art. 
The women's tufts of hair bound up, the men's 
bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent oxen 
which they drive home from market, the little 
asses with their loads, — everything forms a 
living, animated Heinrich Roos. And now that 
it is evening, in the mild air a few clouds rest 
upon the mountains, in the heavens more stand 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 413 

still than move, and immediately after sunset 
the chirping of crickets begins to grow more 
loud; then one feels for once at home in the world, 
and not as concealed or in exile. I am contented 
as though I had been born and brought up here, 
and were now returning from a Greenland or 
whaling voyage. Even the dust of my Father- 
land, which is often whirled about the wagon, 
and which for so long a time I had not seen, is 
greeted. The clock-and-bell jingling of the 
crickets is altogether lovely, penetrating, and 
agreeable. It sounds bravely when roguish 
boys whistle in emulation of a field of such 
songstresses. One fancies that they really en- 
hance one another. Also the evening is per- 
fectly mild as the day." 

"If one who dwelt in the south and came 
hither from the south should hear of my rapture 
hereupon, he would deem me very childish. 
Alas! what I here express I have long known 
while I suffered under an unpropitious heaven, 
and now may I joyful feel this joy as an excep- 
tion, which we should enjoy everforth as an 
eternal necessity of our nature." 

Thus we "say led by thought and pleasaunce," 
as Chaucer says, and all things seemed with us 
to flow; the shore itself, and the distant cliffs, 
were dissolved by the undiluted air. The 
hardest material seemed to obey the same law 



414 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

with the most fluid, and so indeed in the long 
run it does. Trees were but rivers of sap and 
woody fibre, flowing from the atmosphere, and 
emptying into the earth by their trunks, as 
their roots flowed upward to the surface. And 
in the heavens there were rivers of stars, and 
milky ways, already beginning to gleam and 
ripple over our heads. There were rivers of 
rock on the surface of the earth, and rivers of 
ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and 
circulated, and this portion of time was but the 
current hour. Let us wander where we will, 
the universe is built round about us, and we are 
central still. If we look into the heavens they 
are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf 
as bottomless, it would be concave also. The 
sky is curved downward to the earth in the hori- 
zon, because we stand on the plain. I draw down 
its skirts. The stars so low there seem loath 
to depart, but by a circuitous path to be remem- 
bering me, and returning on their steps. 

We had already passed by broad daylight 
the scene of our encampment at Coos Falls, 
and at length we pitched our camp on the west 
bank, in the northern part of Merrimack, 
nearly opposite to the large island on which 
we had spent the noon in our way up the river. 

There we went to bed that summer evening, 
on a sloping shelf in the bank, a couple of rods 
from our boat, which was drawn up on the sand, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 415 

and just behind a thin fringe of oaks which bor- 
dered the river; without having disturbed any 
inhabitants but the spiders in the grass, which 
came out by the light of our lamp and crawled 
over our buffaloes. When we looked out from 
under the tent, the trees were seen dimly through 
the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, 
which seemed to rejoice in the night, and with 
the damp air we inhaled a solid fragrance. Hav- 
ing eaten our supper of hot cocoa and bread and 
watermelon, we soon grew weary of conversing 
and writing in our journals, and putting out 
the lantern which hung from the tent pole, fell 
asleep. 

Unfortunately many things have been omit- 
ted which should have been recorded in our 
journal, for though we made it a rule to set 
down all our experiences therein, yet such a 
resolution is very hard to keep, for the important 
experience rarely allows us to remember such 
obligations, and so indifferent things get re- 
corded, while that is frequently neglected. It 
is not easy to write in a journal what interests 
us at any time, because to write it is not what 
interests us. 

Whenever we awoke in the night, still eking 
out our dreams with half-awakened thoughts, 
it was not till after an interval, when the wind 
breathed harder than usual, flapping the cur- 
tains of the tent, and causing its cords to vi- 



416 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

brate, that we remembered that we lay on the 
bank of the Merrimack, and not in our chamber 
at home. With our heads so low in the grass, 
we heard the river whirling and sucking, and 
lapsing downward, kissing the shore as it went, 
sometimes rippling louder than usual, and again 
its mighty current making only a slight limpid 
trickling sound, as if our water-pail had sprung 
a leak, and the water were flowing into the grass 
by our side. The wind, rustling the oaks and 
hazels, impressed us like a wakeful and incon- 
siderate person up at midnight, moving about 
and putting things to rights, occasionally stir- 
ring up whole drawers full of leaves at a puff. 
There seemed to be a great haste and prepara- 
tion throughout Nature, as for a distinguished 
visitor; all her aisles had to be swept in the night, 
by a thousand hand-maidens, and a thousand 
pots to be boiled for the next day's feasting; — 
such a whispering bustle, as if ten thousand 
fairies made their fingers fly, silently sewing at 
the new carpet with which the earth was to be 
clothed, and the new drapery which was to 
adorn the trees. And then the wind would lull 
and die away and we like it fell asleep again. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 417 



FRIDAY 

"The Boteman stray t 
Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse, 
Ne ever shroncke, ne ever sought to bayt 
His tryed armes for toylesome wearinesse; 
But with his oares did sweepe the watry wildernesse." 

— Spencer. 

"Summer's robe grows 
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows." 

— Donne. 

AS we lay awake long before daybreak, 
listening to the rippling of the river and 
the rustling of the leaves, in suspense 
whether the wind blew up or down the stream, 
was favorable or unfavorable to our voyage, we 
already suspected that there was a change in 
the weather, from a freshness as of autumn in 
these sounds. The wind in the woods sounded 
like an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring 
amid rocks, and we even felt encouraged by the 
unusual activity of the elements. He who hears 
the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days 
will not utterly despair. That night was the 
turning point in the season. We had gone to 
bed in summer, and we awoke in autumn; for 



418 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

summer passes into autumn in some unimag- 
inable point of time, like the turning of a 
leaf. 

We found our boat in the dawn just as we 
had left it, and as if waiting for us, there on the 
shore, in autumn, all cool and dripping with 
dew, and our tracks still fresh in the wet sand 
around it, the fairies all gone or concealed. 
Before five o'clock we pushed it into the fog, 
and leaping in, at one shove were out of sight 
of the shores, and began to sweep downward 
with the rushing river, keeping a sharp look out 
for rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgling 
water, and a solid bank of fog on every side 
forming a small yard around us. We soon 
passed the mouth of the Souhegan and the 
village of Merrimack, and as the mist gradually 
rolled away, and we were relieved from the 
trouble of watching for rocks, we saw by the 
flitting clouds, by the first russet tinge on the 
hills, by the rushing river, the cottages on shore, 
and the shore itself, so coolly fresh and shining 
with dew, and later in the day, by the hue of 
the grape vine, the goldfinch on the willow, the 
flickers flying in flocks, and when we passed 
near enough to the shore, as we fancied, by the 
faces of men, that the Fall had commenced. 
The cottages looked more snug and comfort- 
able, and their inhabitants were seen only for 
a moment, and then went quietly in and shut 




Souhegan River 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 419 

the door, retreating inward to the haunts of 
summer. 

"And now the cold autumnal dews are seen 
To cobweb ev'ry green; 
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear 
The fast declining year." 

We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, 
and even the water had acquired a grayer hue. 
The sumach, grape, and maple were already 
changed, and the milkweed had turned to a deep 
rich yellow. In all woods the leaves were fast 
ripening for their fall; for their full veins and 
lively gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the sered 
one of the poets; and we knew that the maples, 
stripped of their leaves among the earliest, 
would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along 
the edge of the meadow. Already the cattle 
were heard to low wildly in the pastures and 
along the highways, restlessly running to and 
fro, as if in apprehension of the withering of 
the grass and of the approach of winter. Our 
thoughts too began to rustle. 

As I pass along the streets of our village of 
Concord on the day of our annual Cattle Show, 
when it usually happens that the leaves of the 
elms and buttonwoods begin first to strew the 
ground under the breath of the October wind, 
the lively spirits in their sap seem to mount as 
high as any plow-boy's let loose that day; and 



420 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

they lead my thoughts away to the rustling 
woods, where the trees are preparing for their 
winter campaign. This autumnal festival, when 
men are gathered in crowds in the streets as 
regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves 
cluster and rustle by the wayside, is naturally 
associated in my mind with the fall of the year. 
The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a 
hoarse symphony or running base to the rustling 
of the leaves. The wind goes hurrying down the 
country, gleaning every loose straw that is left 
in the fields, while every farmer lad too appears 
to scud before it, — having donned his best pea- 
jacket and pepper-and-salt waistcoat, his un- 
bent trousers, outstanding rigging of duck, or 
kersymere, or corduroy, and his furry hat withal, 

— to country fairs and cattle shows, to that 
Rome among the villages where the treasures 
of the year are gathered. All the land over they 
go leaping the fences with their tough idle palms, 
which have never learned to hang by their sides, 
amid the low of calves and the bleating of sheep, 

— Amos, Abner, Elnathan, Elbridge, — 

"From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain." 

I love these sons of earth, every mother's son of 
them, with their great hearty hearts rushing tu- 
multously in herds from spectacle to spectacle, 
as if fearful lest there should not be time be- 
tween sun and sun to see them all, and the sun 
does not wait more than in haying time. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 421 

"Wise nature's darlings, they live in the world 
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled." 

Running hither and thither with appetite for 
the coarse pastimes of the day, now with boister- 
ous speed at the heels of the inspired negro from 
whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and 
Guinea coast have broke loose into our streets; 
now to see the procession of a hundred yoke 
of oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or 
the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as un- 
spotted as Isis or Io. Such as had no love for 
Nature 

"at all, 
Came lovers home from this great festival." 

They may bring their fattest cattle and richest 
fruits to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the 
show of men. These are stirring autumn days, 
when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle 
of leaves, like migrating finches, this is the true 
harvest of the year, when the air is but the 
breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the 
trampling of the crowd. We read now-a-days 
of the ancient festivals, games, and processions 
of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a little in- 
credulity, or at least with little sympathy; but 
how natural and irrepressible in every people 
is some hearty and palpable greeting of Nature. 
The Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude 
primitive tragedians with their procession and 
goat-song, and the whole paraphernalia of the 



422 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Panathensea, which appear so antiquated and 
peculiar, have their parallel now. The husband- 
man is always a better Greek than the scholar 
is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom 
still survives, while antiquarians and scholars 
grow gray in commemorating it. The farmers 
crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to the 
same ancient law which Solon or Lycurgus did 
not enact, as naturally as bees swarm and 
follow their queen. 

It is worth the while to see the country's 
people, how they pour into the town, the sober 
farmer folk, now all agog, their very shirt and 
coat collars pointing forward, — collars so broad 
as if they had put their shirts on wrong end 
upward, for the fashions always tend to super- 
fluity, — and with an unusual springiness in 
their gait, jabbering earnestly to one another. 
The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear 
on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the 
next day to disappear, and go into his hole like 
the seventeen-year locust, in an ever shabby 
coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet 
never dressed; come to see the sport, and have 
a hand in what is going, — to know "what's the 
row," if there is any; to be where some men are 
drunk, some horses race, some cockerels fight; 
anxious to be shaking props under a table, and 
above all to see the "striped pig." He especially 
is the creature of the occasion. He empties 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 423 

both his pockets and his character into the 
stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly 
loves the social slush. There is no reserve of 
soberness in him. 

I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily 
on coarse and succulent pleasures, as cattle on 
the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though 
there are many crooked and crabbed specimens 
of humanity among them, run all to thorn and 
rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse 
circumstances, like the third chestnut in the 
burr, so that you wonder to see some heads 
wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will 
fail or waiver in them; like the crabs which 
grow in hedges, they furnish the stocks of 
sweet and thrifty fruits still. Thus is nature 
recruited from age to age, while the fair and 
palatable varieties die out and have their 
period. This is that mankind. How cheap 
must be the material of which so many are 
made. 

The wind blew steadily down the stream, so 
that we kept our sails set, and lost not a mo- 
ment of the forenoon by delays, but from early 
morning until noon, were continually dropping 
downward. With our hands on the steering 
paddle, which was thrust deep into the river, or 
bending to the oar, which indeed we rarely re- 
linquished, we felt each palpitation in the veins 



424 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of our steed, and each impulse of the wings 
which drew us above. The current of our 
thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, 
which was continually opening new prospects to 
the east or south, but we are aware that rivers 
flow most rapidly and shallowest at these 
points. The steadfast shores never once turned 
aside for us, but still trended as they were made; 
why then should we always turn aside for them? 

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his 
Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler 
conduct than the world demands or can appreci- 
ate. These winged thoughts are like birds, and 
will not be handled; even hens will not let you 
touch them like quadrupeds. Nothing was 
ever so unfamiliar and startling to a man as his 
own thoughts. 

To the rarest genius it is the most expensive 
to succumb and conform to the ways of the 
world. Genius is the worst of lumber, if the 
poet would float upon the breeze of popularity. 
The bird of paradise is obliged constantly to fly 
against the wind, lest its gay trappings, pressing 
close to its body, may impede its free movements. 

He is the best sailor who can steer within the 
fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive 
power out of the greatest obstacles. Most 
begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind 
changes from aft, and as within the tropics it 
does not blow from all points of the compass, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 425 

there are some harbors which they can never 
reach. 

The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who 
requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his 
defence, but the toughest son of earth and of 
Heaven, and by his greater strength and en- 
durance his fainting companions will recognize 
the God in him. It is the worshippers of beauty, 
after all, who have done the real pioneer work 
of the world. 

The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of 
his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He 
will hit the nail on the head, and we shall 
not know the shape of his hammer. He 
makes us free of his hearth and heart, which 
is greater than to offer one the freedom of a 
city. 

Great men, unknown to their generation, 
have their fame among the great who have 
preceded them, and all true worldly fame 
subsides from their high estimate beyond the 
stars. 

Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue 
from his lyre, but only those which are breathed 
into it; for the original strain precedes the 
sound, by as much as the echo follows after; 
the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees 
and beasts. 

When I stand in a library where is all the 
recorded wit of the world, but none of the record- 



426 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ing, a mere accumulated, and not truly cumula- 
tive treasure, where immortal works stand side by 
side with anthologies which did not survive their 
moth, and cobweb and mildew have already 
spread from these to the binding of those; and 
happily I am reminded of what poetry is, I 
perceive that Shakspeare and Milton did not 
foresee into what company they were to fall. 
Alas ! that so soon the work of a true poet should 
be swept into such a dust-hole! 

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will 
remember only that he saw truth and beauty 
from his position, and expect the time when a 
vision as broad shall overlook the same field as 
freely. 

We are often prompted to speak our thoughts 
to our neighbors, or the single travellers whom 
we meet on the road, but poetry is a communica- 
tion from our home and solitude addressed to all 
Intelligence. It never whispers in a private ear. 
Knowing this, we may understand those sonnets 
said to be addressed to particular persons, or 
"to a Mistress' Eyebrow." Let none feel 
flattered by them. For poetry write love, and 
it will be equally true. 

No doubt it is an important difference be- 
tween men of genius or poets, and men not of 
genius, that the latter are unable to grasp and 
confront the thought which visits them. But 
it is because it is too faint for expression, or 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 427 

even conscious impression. What merely quick- 
ens or retards the blood in their veins and fills 
their afternoons with pleasure they know not 
whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the 
finer organization of the poet. 

We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, 
and the poet could only express what other men 
conceived. But in comparison with his task 
the poet is the least talented of any; the writer 
of prose has more skill. See what talent the 
smith has. His material is pliant in his hands. 
When the poet is most inspired, is stimulated by 
an aura which never even colors the afternoons 
of common men, then his talent is all gone, and 
he is no longer a poet. The gods do not grant 
him any skill more than another. They never 
put their gifts into his hands, but they encom- 
pass and sustain him with their breath. 

To say that God has given a man many and 
great talents, frequently means, that he has 
brought his heavens down within reach of his 
hands. 

When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and 
scratch with our pen, intent only on worms, 
calling our mates around us, like the cock, and 
delighting in the dust we make, but do not 
detect where the jewel lies, which, perhaps, we 
have in the meantime cast to a distance, or 
quite covered up again. 

The poet's body even is not fed simply like 



428 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine 
nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a 
divine life. By the healthful and invigorating 
thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a 
serene old age. 

Some poems are for holidays only. They are 
polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of 
sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. 
The breath with which the poet utters his 
verse must be that by which he lives. 

Great prose, of equal elevation, commands 
our respect more than great verse, since it 
implies a more permanent and level height, a 
life more pervaded with the grandeur of the 
thought. The poet often only makes an irrup- 
tion, like a Parthian, and is off again, shoot- 
ing while he retreats; but the prose writer 
has conquered like a Roman, and settled 
colonies. 

The true poem is not that which the public 
read. There is always a poem not printed on 
paper, coincident with the production of this, 
stereotyped in the poet's life. It is what he has 
become through his work. Not how is the idea 
expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the 
question, but how far it has obtained form and 
expression in the life of the artist. His true 
work will not stand in any prince's gallery. 

My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
But I could not both live and utter it. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 429 

THE POET'S DELAY 

In vain I see the morning rise, 
In vain observe the western blaze, 

Who idly look to other skies, 
Expecting life by other ways. 

Amidst such boundless wealth without, 

I only still am poor within, 
The birds have sung their summer out, 

But still my spring does not begin. 

Shall I then wait the autumn wind, 

Compelled to seek a milder day, 
And leave no curious nest behind, 

No woods still echoing to my lay? 

This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of 
the oaks and pines on shore, reminded us of 
more northern climes than Greece, and more 
wintry seas than the iEgean. 

The genuine remains of Ossian, or those 
ancient poems which bear his name, though of 
less fame and extent, are, in many respects, of 
the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts 
the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and 
in his era we hear of no other priest than he. It 
will not avail to call him a heathen, because he 
personifies the sun and addresses it; and what 
if his heroes did "worship the ghosts of their 
fathers," their thin, airy, and unsubstantial 
forms? we but worship the ghosts of our fathers 
in more substantial forms. We cannot but 
respect the vigorous faith of those heathen, who 
sternly believed somewhat, and we are inclined 



430 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

to say to the critics, who are offended by their 
superstitious rites, — Don't interrupt these men's 
prayers. As if we knew more about human life 
and a God, than the heathen and ancients. 
Does English theology contain the recent 
discoveries? 

Ossian reminds us of the most refined and 
rudest eras, of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the 
American Indian. In his poetry, as in Homer's, 
only the simplest and most enduring features of 
humanity are seen, such essential parts of a 
man as Stonehenge exhibits of a temple; we 
see the circles of stone, and the upright shaft 
alone. The phenomena of life acquire almost 
an unreal and gigantic size seen through his 
mists. Like all older and grander poetry, it is 
distinguished by the few elements in the lives 
of its heroes. They stand on the heath, between 
the stars and the earth, shrunk to the bones and 
sinews. The earth is a boundless plain for 
their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and 
everlasting life, as hardly needs depart with the 
flesh, but is transmitted entire from age to age. 
There are but few objects to distract their sight, 
and their life is as unincumbered as the course 
of the stars they gaze at. — 

"The wrathful kings, on cairns apart, 
Look forward from behind their shields, 
And mark the wandering stars, 
That brilliant westward move." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 431 

It does not cost much for these heroes to live; 
they do not want much furniture. They are 
such forms of men only as can be seen afar 
through the mist, and have no costume nor 
dialect, but for language there is the tongue 
itself, and for costume there are always the 
skins of beasts and the bark of trees to be had. 
They live out their years by the vigor of their 
constitutions. They survive storms and the 
spears of their foes, and perform a few heroic 
deeds, and then, 

"Mounds will answer questions of them, 
For many future years." 

Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of 
their days listening to the lays of the bards, and 
feeling the weapons which laid their enemies 
low, and when at length they die, by a convul- 
sion of nature, the bard allows us a short and 
misty glance into futurity, yet as clear, perchance, 
as their lives had been. When MacRoine was 
slain, 

"His soul departed to his warlike sires, 
To follow misty forms of boars, 
In tempestuous islands bleak." 

The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a 
brief significant strain, which will suffice for 
epitaph and biography. 

"The weak will find his bow in the dwelling, 
The feeble will attempt to bend it." 



432 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our 
civilized history appears the chronicle of de- 
bility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But 
the civilized man misses no real refinement in 
the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him 
that civilization does but dress men. It makes 
shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the 
feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it 
does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized 
man stands the savage still in the place of 
honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired 
Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans. 

The profession of the bard attracted more 
respect in those days from the importance at- 
tached to fame. It was his province to record 
the deeds of heroes. When Ossian hears the 
traditions of inferior bards, he exclaims, — 

"I straightway seize the unf utile tales," 
And send them down in faithful verse." 

His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening 
of the third Duan of Ca-Lodin. 

"Whence have sprung the things that are? 
And whither roll the passing years? 
Where does Time conceal its two heads, 
In dense impenetrable gloom, 
Its surface marked with heroes' deeds alone? 
I view the generations gone; 
The past appears but dim; 
As objects by the moon's faint beams, 
Reflected from a distant lake. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 433 

I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war, 
But there the unmighty joyless dwell, 
All those who send not down their deeds 
To far, succeeding times." 

The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten; 

"'Strangers come to build a tower, 
And throw their ashes overhand ; 
Some rusted swords appear in dust; 
One, bending forward, says, 
'The arms belonged to heroes gone; 
We never heard their praise in song.' " 

The grandeur of the similes is another feature 
which characterizes great poetry. Ossian seems 
to speak a gigantic and universal language. 
The images and pictures occupy even much 
space in the landscape, as if they could be seen 
only from the sides of mountains, and plains 
with a wide horizon, or across arms of the sea. 
The machinery is so massive that it cannot be 
less than natural. Oivana says to the spirit of 
her father, "Grey -haired Torkil of Torne," seen 
in the skies, 

"Thou glidest away like receding ships." 

So when the hosts of Fingal and Starne ap- 
proach to battle, 

"With murmurs loud, like rivers far, 
The race of Torne hither moved." 

And when compelled to retire, 



434 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"dragging his spear behind, 



Cudulin sank in the distant wood, 
Like a fire upblazing ere it dies." 

Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he 
spoke; 

"A thousand orators inclined 
To hear the lay of Fingal." 

The threats too would have deterred a man. 
Vengeance and terror were real. Trenmore 
threatens the young warrior whom he meets on 
a foreign strand, 

"Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore, 
While lessening on the waves she spies 
The sails of him who slew her son." 

If Ossian's heroes weep, it is from excess of 
strength, and not from weakness, a sacrifice 
or libation of fertile natures, like the perspira- 
tion of stone in summer's heat. We hardly 
know that tears have been shed, and it seems as 
if weeping were proper only for babes and 
heroes. Their joy and their sorrow are made of 
one stuff, like rain and snow, the rainbow and 
the mist. When Fillan was worsted in fight, 
and ashamed in the presence of Fingal, 

"He strode away forthwith, 
And bent in grief above a stream, 
His cheeks bedewed with tears. 
From time to time the thistles gray 
He lopped with his inverted lance." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 435 

Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of 
Fingal, who comes to aid him in war; — 

"'My eyes have failed,' says he, 'Crodar is blind, 
Is thy strength like that of thy fathers? 
Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.' 

I gave my arm to the king. 
The aged hero seized my hand; 
He heaved a heavy sigh; 
Tears flowed incessant down his cheek. 
'Strong art thou, son of the mighty, 
Though not so dreadful as Morven's prince. * * * 
Let my feast be spread in the hall, 
Let every sweet- voiced minstrel sing; 
Great is he who is within my wall, 
Sons of wave-echoing Croma.' " 

Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays 
tribute to the superior strength of his father 
Fingal. 

"How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind, 
Why succeeded Ossian without its strength?" 



While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with 
the river gurgling under our stern, the thoughts 
of autumn coursed as steadily through our 
minds, and we observed less what was passing 
on the shore, than the dateless associations and 
impressions which the season awakened, anti- 
cipating in some measure the progress of the 
year. — 



436 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I hearing get, who had but ears, 

And sight, who had but eyes before, 
I moments live, who lived but years, 

And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore. 

Sitting with our faces now up stream, we 
studied the landscape by degrees, as one un- 
rolls a map, — rock, tree, house, hill, and 
meadow, assuming new and varying positions 
as wind and water shifted the scene, and there 
was variety enough for our entertainment in the 
metamorphoses of the simplest objects. Viewed 
from this side the scenery appeared new to us. 

The most familiar sheet of water viewed from 
a new hill-top, yields a novel and unexpected 
pleasure. When we have travelled a few miles, 
we do not recognize the profiles even of the hills 
which overlook our native village, and perhaps 
no man is quite familiar with the horizon as 
seen from the hill nearest to his house, and can 
recall its outline distinctly when in the valley. 
We do not commonly know, beyond a short 
distance, which way the hills range which take 
in our houses and farms in their sweep. As if 
our birth had at first sundered things, and we 
had been thrust up through into nature like a 
wedge, and not till the wound heals and the 
scar disappears, do we begin to discover where 
we are, and that nature is one and continuous 
everywhere. It is an important epoch when a 
man who has always lived on the east side of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 437 

a mountain and seen it in the west, travels 
round and sees it in the east. Yet the universe 
is a sphere whose centre is wherever there is 
intelligence. The sun is not so central as a man. 
Upon an isolated hill-top, in an open country, 
we seem to ourselves to be standing on the boss 
of an immense shield, the immediate landscape 
being apparently depressed below the more 
remote, and rising gradually to the horizon, 
which is the rim of the shield, villas, steeples, 
forests, mountains, one above another, till they 
are swallowed up in the heavens. The most 
distant mountains appear to rise directly from 
the shore of that lake in the woods by which we 
chance to be standing, while from the mountain 
top, not only this, but a thousand nearer and 
larger lakes, are equally unobserved. 

Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works 
of the farmer, his plowing and reaping, had a 
beauty to our eyes which he never saw. How 
fortunate were we who did not own an acre of 
these shores, who had not renounced our title 
to the whole. One who knew how to appropriate 
the true value of this world would be the poorest 
man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is 
what he has bought. What I see is mine. I am 
a large owner in the Merrimack intervals. — 

Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend, 
Who yet no partial store appropriate, 

Who no armed ship into the Indies send, 
To rob me of my orient estate. 



438 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of 
riches, who summer and winter forever can find 
delight in his own thoughts. Buy a farm! What 
have I to pay for a farm which a farmer will 
take? 

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I 
am glad to find that nature wears so well. The 
landscape is indeed something real, and solid, 
and sincere, and I have not put my foot through 
it yet. There is a pleasant tract on the bank 
of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have 
in my mind ; — the old deserted farm-house, 
the desolate pasture with its bleak cliff, the 
open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow 
in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple 
orchard, — places where one may have many 
thoughts and not decide anything. It is a scene 
which I can not only remember, as I might a 
vision, but when I will can bodily revisit, and 
find it even so, unaccountable, yet unpretend- 
ing in its pleasant dreariness. When my thoughts 
are sensible of change, I love to see and sit on 
rocks which I have known, and pry into their 
moss, and see unchangeableness so established. 
I not yet gray on rocks forever gray, I no 
longer green under the evergreens. There is 
something even in the lapse of time by which 
time recovers itself. 

As we have said, it proved a cool as well as 
breezy day, and by the time we reached Peni- 




Near the mouth of Pennichook Brook 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 439 

chook Brook, we were obliged to sit muffled in 
our cloaks, while the wind and current carried 
us along. We bounded swiftly over the rippling 
surface, far by many cultivated lands and the 
ends of fences which divided innumerable farms, 
with hardly a thought for the various lives 
which they separated; now by long rows of 
alders or groves of pines or oaks, and now by 
some homestead where the women and children 
stood outside to gaze at us, till we had swept 
out of their sight, and beyond the limit of their 
longest Saturday ramble. We glided past the 
mouth of the Nashua, and not long after, of 
Salmon Brook, without more pause than the 
wind. — 

Salmon Brook, 
Penichook, 
Ye sweet waters of my brain, 
When shaJl I look, 
Or cast the hook, 
In your waves again? 

Silver eels, 
Wooden creels, 
These the baits that still allure, 
And dragon-fly 
That floated by, — 
May they still endure? 

The shadows chased one another swiftly over 
wood and meadow, and their alternation harmo- 
nized with our mood. We could distinguish the 
clouds which cast each one, though never so 



440 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

high in the heavens. When a shadow flits 
across the landscape of the soul, where is the 
substance? Probably, if we were wise enough, 
we should see to what virtue we are indebted 
for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt 
we have earned it at some time; for the gifts 
of Heaven are never quite gratuitous. The 
constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes 
the soil of our future growth. The wood which 
we now mature, when it becomes virgin mould, 
determines the character of our second growth, 
whether that be oaks or pines. Every man 
casts a shadow; not his body only, but his 
imperfectly mingled spirit; this is his grief; 
let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite 
to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you 
never see it? — But, referred to the sun, it is 
widest at its base, which is no greater than his 
own opacity. The divine light is diffused 
almost entirely around us, and by means of the 
reflection of light, or else by a certain self- 
luminousness, or, as some will have it, trans- 
parency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished, 
we are able to enlighten our shaded side. At 
any rate, our darkest grief has that bronze 
color of the moon eclipsed. There is no ill 
which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if 
you let in a stronger light upon it. Shadows, 
referred to the source of light, are pyramids 
whose bases are never greater than those of the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 441 

substances which cast them, but light is a spheri- 
cal congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes 
are the sun itself, and hence the system shines 
with uninterrupted light. But if the light we 
use is but a paltry and narrow taper, most ob- 
jects will cast a shadow wider than themselves. 

The places where we had stopped or spent the 
night in our way up the river, had already ac- 
quired a slight historical interest for us; for 
many upward days' voyaging were unravelled 
in this rapid downward passage. When one 
landed to stretch his limbs by walking, he soon 
found himself falling behind his companion, 
and was obliged to take advantage of the curves, 
and ford the brooks and ravines in haste, to 
recover his ground. Already the banks and the 
distant meadows wore a sober and deepened 
tinge, for the September air had shorn them of 
their summer's pride. — 

"And what's a life? The flourishing array 
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day 
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay." 

The air was really the "fine element" which the 
poets describe. It had a finer and sharper grain, 
seen against the russet pastures and meadows, 
than before, as if cleansed of the summer's 
impurities. 

Having passed the New Hampshire line and 
reached the Horseshoe Interval in Tyngsboro', 
where there is a high and regular second bank, 



442 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

we climbed up this in haste to get a nearer sight 
of the autumnal flowers, asters, golden-rod, and 
yarrow, and the trichostema dichotoma, humble 
road-side blossoms, and, lingering still, the hare- 
bell and the rhexia Virginica. The last, growing 
in patches of lively pink flowers on the edge of 
the meadows, had almost too gay an appearance 
for the rest of the landscape, like a pink ribbon 
on the bonnet of a Puritan woman. Asters and 
golden-rods were the livery which nature wore 
at present. The latter alone expressed all the 
ripeness of the season, and shed their mellow 
lustre over the fields, as if the now declining 
summer's sun had bequeathed its hues to them. 
It is the floral solstice a little after mid-summer, 
when the particles of golden light, the sun-dust, 
have, as it were, fallen like seeds on the earth, 
and produced these blossoms. On every hill- 
side, and in every valley, stood countless asters, 
coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole 
race of yellow flowers, like Brahminical devotees, 
turning steadily with their luminary from morn- 
ing till night. 

"I see the golden-rod shine bright, 
As sun-showers at the birth of day, 
A golden plume of yellow light, 

That robs the Day-god's splendid ray. 

"The aster's violet rays divide 

The bank with many stars for me, 
And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed, 
As moonlight floats across the sea. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 443 

"I see the emerald woods prepare 
To shed their vestiture once more, 
And distant elm-trees spot the air 
With yellow pictures softly o'er. * * 

"No more the water-lily's pride 

In milk-white circles swims content, 
No more the blue-weed's clusters ride 
And mock the heaven's element. * * 

"Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent 
With the same colors, for to me 
A richer sky than all is lent, 

While fades my dream-like company. 

"Our skies glow purple, but the wind 

Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass, 
To-day shines fair, and lurk behind 
The times that into winter pass. 

"So fair we seem, so cold we are, 
So fast we hasten to decay, 
Yet through our night glows many a star, 
That still shall claim its sunny day." 

So sang a Concord poet once. 

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the 
still later flowers, which abide with us the ap- 
proach of winter. There is something witch- 
like in the appearance of the witch-hazel, 
which blossoms late in October and in November, 
with its irregular and angular spray and petals 
like furies' hair, or small ribbon streamers. Its 
blossoming, too, at this irregular period, when 
other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as 



444 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

blossoms, looks like witches' craft. Certainly 
it blooms in no garden of man's. There is 
a whole fairy-land on the hill-side where it 
grows. 

Some have thought that the gales do not at 
present waft to the voyager the natural and 
original fragrance of the land, such as the early 
navigators described, and that the loss of many 
odoriferous native plants, sweet-scented grasses 
and medicinal herbs, which formerly sweetened 
the atmosphere, and rendered it salubrious, by 
the grazing of cattle and the rooting of swine, 
is the source of many diseases which now pre- 
vail; the earth, say they, having been long sub- 
jected to extremely artificial and luxurious 
modes of cultivation, to gratify the appetite, 
converted into a stye and hot-bed, where men 
for profit increase the ordinary decay of nature. 

According to the record of an old inhabitant 
of Tyngsboro', now dead, whose farm we were 
now gliding past, one of the greatest freshets on 
this river took place in October, 1785, and its 
height was marked by a nail driven into an 
apple tree behind his house. One of his descend- 
ants has shown this to me, and I judged it to 
be at least seventeen or eighteen feet above the 
level of the river at the time. Before the Lowell 
and Nashua railroad was built, the engineer 
made inquiries of the inhabitants along the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 445 

banks as to how high they had known the river 
to rise. When he came to this house he was 
conducted to the apple tree, and as the nail was 
not then visible, the lady of the house placed 
her hand on the trunk where she said that she 
remembered the nail to have been from her 
childhood. In the meanwhile the old man put 
his arm inside the tree, which was hollow, and 
felt the point of the nail sticking through, and 
it was exactly opposite to her hand. The spot 
is now plainly marked by a notch in the bark. 
But as no one else remembered the river to 
have risen so high as this, the engineer disre- 
garded this statement, and I learn that there has 
since been a freshet which rose within nine 
inches of the rails at Biscuit Brook, and such a 
freshet as that of 1785 would have covered the 
railroad two feet deep. 

The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, 
and make as interesting revelations, on this 
river's banks, as on the Euphrates or the Nile. 
This apple tree, which stands within a few rods 
of the river, is called "Elisha's apple tree," 
from a friendly Indian, who was anciently in 
the service of Jonathan Tyng, and, with one 
other man, was killed here by his own race in one 
of the Indian wars, — the particulars of which 
affair were told us on the spot. He was buried 
close by, no one knew exactly where, but in the 
flood of 1785, so great a weight of water stand- 



446 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ing over the grave, caused the earth to settle 
where it had once been disturbed, and when the 
flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the 
form and size of the grave, revealed its locality, 
but this was now lost again, and no future flood 
can detect it; yet, no doubt, Nature will know 
how to point it out in due time, if it be necessary, 
by methods yet more searching and unexpected. 
Thus there is not only the crisis when the spirit 
ceases to inspire and expand the body, marked 
by a fresh mound in the church -yard, but there 
is also a crisis when the body ceases to take up 
room as such in nature, marked by a fainter 
depression in the earth. 

We sat awhile to rest us here upon the brink 
of the western bank, surrounded by the glossy 
leaves of the red variety of the mountain laurel, 
just above the head of Wicasuck Island, where 
we could observe some scows which were load- 
ing with clay from the opposite shore, and also 
overlook the grounds of the farmer, of whom I 
have spoken, who once hospitably entertained 
us for a night. He had on his pleasant farm, 
besides an abundance of the beach plum, or 
prunus littoralis, which grew wild, the Canada 
plum under cultivation, fine Porter apples, 
some peaches, and large patches of musk and 
watermelons, which he cultivated for the Lowell 
market. Elisha's apple tree, too, bore a native 
fruit, which was prized by the family. He 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 447 

raised the blood peach, which, as he showed us 
with satisfaction, was more like the oak in the 
color of its bark and in the setting of its branches, 
and was less liable to break down under the 
weight of the fruit, or the snow, than other 
varieties. It was of slower growth, and its 
branches strong and tough. There, also, was 
his nursery of native apple trees, thickly set 
upon the bank, which cost but little care, and 
which he sold to the neighboring farmers when 
they were five or six years old. To see a single 
peach upon its stem makes an impression of 
paradisaical fertility and luxury. This re- 
minded us even of an old Roman farm, as de- 
scribed by Varro: "Caesar Vopiscus iEdilicius, 
when he pleaded before the Censors, said that 
the grounds of Rosea were the garden (sumen 
the tid-bit) of Italy, in which a pole being left 
would not be visible the day after, on account of 
the growth of the herbage." This soil may not 
have been remarkably fertile, yet at this dis- 
tance we thought that this anecdote might be 
told of the Tyngsboro' farm. 

When we passed Wicasuck Island, there was 
a pleasure boat containing a youth and a maiden 
on the island brook, which we were pleased to 
see, since it proved that there were some here- 
abouts to whom our excursions would not be 
wholly strange. Before this, a canal-boatman, of 
whom we made some inquiries respecting Wica- 



448 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

suck Island, and who told us that it was disputed 
property, supposed that we had a claim upon it, 
and though we assured him that all this was 
news to us, and explained, as well as we could, 
why we had come to see it, he believed not a 
word of it, and seriously offered us one hundred 
dollars for our title. The only other small 
boats which we met with were used to pick up 
driftwood. Some of the poorer class along the 
stream collect, in this way, all the fuel which 
they require. While one of us landed not far 
from this island to forage for provisions among 
the farm-houses whose roofs we saw, for our 
supply was now exhausted, the other, sitting in 
the boat, which was moored to the shore, was 
left alone to his reflections. 

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the 
traveller always has a resource in the skies. 
They are constantly turning a new page to view. 
The wind sets the types on this blue ground, 
and the inquiring may always read a new truth 
there. There are things there written with such 
fine and subtil tinctures, paler than the juice of 
limes, that to the diurnal eye they leave no 
trace, and only the chemistry of night reveals 
them. Every man's daylight firmament answers 
in his mind to the brightness of the vision in his 
starriest hour. 

These continents and hemispheres are soon 
run over, but an always unexplored and infinite 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 449 

region makes off on every side from the mind, 
further than to sunset, and we can make no 
highway or beaten track into it, but the grass 
immediately springs up in the path, for we 
travel there chiefly with our wings. 

Sometimes we see objects as through a thin 
haze, in their eternal relations, and they stand 
like Palenque and the Pyramids, and we wonder 
who set them up, and for what purpose. If we 
see the reality in things, of what moment is the 
superficial and apparent longer? What are the 
earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise 
which pierces and scatters them? While I sit 
here listening to the waves which ripple and 
break on this shore, I am absolved from all 
obligation to the past, and the council of nations 
may reconsider its votes. The grating of a 
pebble annuls them. Still occasionally in my 
dreams I remember that rippling water. — 

Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o'er, 
I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore, 
Distinct as if it were at broad noon-day, 
And I were drifting down from Nashua. 

With a bending sail we glided rapidly by 
Tyngsboro' and Chelmsford, each holding in one 
hand half of a tart country apple-pie which we 
had purchased to celebrate our return, and in the 
other a fragment of the newspaper in which it 
was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish, 
and learning the news which had transpired 



450 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

since we sailed. The river here opened into a 
broad and straight reach of great length, which 
we bounded merrily over before a smacking 
breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our faces, 
and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a 
speed which greatly astonished some scow 
boatmen whom we met. The wind in the horizon 
rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and 
every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains 
like school-boys turned their cheeks to it. They 
were great and current motions, the flowing 
sail, the running stream, the waving tree, the 
roving wind. The north wind stepped readily 
into the harness which we had provided, and 
pulled us along with good will. Sometimes we 
sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds over- 
head, watching the receding shores and the mo- 
tions of our sail; the play of its pulse so like our 
own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so noise- 
less when it labored hardest, so noisy and im- 
patient when least effective; now bending to 
some generous impulse of the breeze, and then 
fluttering and flapping with a kind of human 
suspense. It was the scale on which the varying 
temperature of distant atmospheres was gradu- 
ated, and it was some attraction for us that the 
breeze it played with had been out of doors so 
long. Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but 
as next best, making a long furrow in the fields 
of the Merrimack toward our home, with our 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 451 

wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the 
watery trench; gracefully plowing homeward 
with our brisk and willing team, wind and stream, 
pulling together, the former yet a wild steer, 
yoked to his more sedate fellow. It was very 
near flying, as when the duck rushes through the 
water with an impulse of her wings, throwing 
the spray about her, before she can rise. How 
we had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on 
the shore! 

When we reached the great bend just above 
Middlesex, where the river runs east thirty-five 
miles to the sea, we at length lost the aid of this 
propitious wind, though we contrived to make 
one long and judicious tack carry us nearly to 
the locks of the canal. We were here locked 
through at noon by our old friend, the lover of 
the higher mathematics, who seemed glad to 
see us safe back again through so many locks; 
but we did not stop to consider any of his 
problems, though we could cheerfully have 
spent a whole autumn in this way another time, 
and never have asked what his religion was. It 
is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who 
cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which 
is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind 
every man's busy-ness there should be a level of 
undisturbed serenity and industry, as within 
the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an 
expanse of still water, where the depositions are 



452 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

going on which will finally raise it above the 
surface. 

The eye which can appreciate the naked and 
absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more 
rare than that which is attracted by a moral 
one. Few detect the morality in the former, or 
the science in the latter. Aristotle defined art 
to be Adyo? tov epyov avev vXrjq the principle of 
the work without the wood; but most men prefer 
to have some of the wood along with the princi- 
ple; they demand that the truth be clothed in 
flesh and blood and the warm colors of life. 
They prefer the partial statement because it 
fits and measures them and their commodities 
best. But science still exists everywhere as the 
sealer of weights and measures at least. 

We have heard much about the poetry of 
mathematics, but very little of it has yet been 
sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their 
poetic value than we. The most distinct and 
beautiful statement of any truth must take at 
last the mathematical form. We might so sim- 
plify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of 
arithmetic, that one formula would express them 
both. All the moral laws are readily translated 
into natural philosophy, for often we have only 
to restore the primitive meaning of the words by 
which they are expressed, or to attend to their 
literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They 
are already supernatural philosophy. The whole 





The Merrimack opposite the Middlesex Locks 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 453 

body of what is now called moral or ethical truth 
existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, 
if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature 
are the purest morality. The Tree of Knowl- 
edge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. 
He is not a true man of science who does not 
bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect 
to learn something by behavior as well as by 
application. It is childish to rest in the dis- 
covery of mere coincidences, or of partial and 
extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a 
petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is ap- 
plied to no larger system than the starry one. 
Mathematics should be mixed not only with 
physics but with ethics, that is mixed mathe- 
matics. The fact which interests us most is the 
life of the naturalist. The purest science is still 
biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate 
science while it is sundered so wholly from the 
moral life of its devotee, and he professes an- 
other religion than it teaches, and worships at a 
foreign shrine. Anciently the faith of a philoso- 
pher was identical with his system, or, in other 
words, his view of the universe. 

My friends mistake when they communicate 
facts to me with so much pains. Their presence, 
even their exaggerations and loose statements, 
are equally good facts for me. I have no re- 
spect for facts even except when I would use 
them, and for the most part I am independent 



454 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of those which I hear, and can afford to be inac- 
curate, or, in other words, to substitute more 
present and pressing facts in their place. 

The poet uses the results of science and phil- 
osophy, and generalizes their widest deductions. 

The process of discovery is very simple. An 
unwearied and systematic application of known 
laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal 
themselves. Almost any mode of observation 
will be successful at last, for what is most 
wanted is method. Only let something be 
determined and fixed around which observation 
may rally. How many new relations a foot-rule 
alone will reveal, and to how many things still 
this has not been applied! What wonderful 
discoveries have been, and may still be, made, 
with a plumb-line, a level, a surveyor's compass, 
a thermometer, or a barometer! Where there 
is an observatory and a telescope, we expect 
that any eyes will see new worlds at once. I 
should say that the most prominent scientific 
men of our country, and perhaps of this age, 
are either serving the arts, and not pure science, 
or are performing faithful but quite subordinate 
labors in particular departments. They make 
no steady and systematic approaches to the 
central fact. A discovery is made, and at once 
the attention of all observers is distracted to 
that, and it draws many analogous discoveries 
in its train; as if their work were not already 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 455 

laid out for them, but they had been lying on 
their oars. There is wanting constant and accu- 
rate observation with enough of theory to direct 
and discipline it. 

But above all, there is wanting genius. Our 
books of science, as they improve in accuracy, 
are in danger of losing the freshness and vigor 
and readiness to appreciate the real laws of 
Nature, which is a marked merit in the oft- 
times false theories of the ancients. I am at- 
tracted by the slight pride and satisfaction, the 
emphatic and even exaggerated style in which 
some of the older naturalists speak of the opera- 
tions of Nature, though they are better qualified 
to appreciate than to discriminate the facts. 
Their assertions are not without value when 
disproved. If they are not facts, they are sug- 
gestions for Nature herself to act upon. "The 
Greeks," says Gesner, "had a common proverb 
(Aayo? kcl0€v&(ov) a sleeping hare, for a dissembler 
or counterfeit; because the hare sees when she 
sleeps; for this is an admirable and rare work 
of Nature, that all the residue of her bodily 
parts take their rest, but the eye standeth 
continually sentinel." 

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are 
being so rapidly added to the sum of human 
experience, that it appears as if the theorizer 
would always be in arrears, and were doomed 
forever to arrive at imperfect conclusions; but 



456 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all 
ages of the world, and depends but little on the 
number of facts observed. The senses of the 
savage will furnish him with facts enough to 
set him up as a philosopher. The ancients can 
still speak to us with authority even on the 
themes of geology and chemistry, though these 
studies are thought to have had their birth in 
modern times. Much is said about the progress 
of science in these centuries. I should say that 
the useful results of science had accumulated, 
but that there had been no accumulation of 
knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity; for 
knowledge is to be acquired only by a corres- 
ponding experience. How can we know what 
we are told merely? Each man can interpret 
another's experience only by his own. We read 
that Newton discovered the law of gravitation, 
but how many who have heard of his famous 
discovery have recognized the same truth that 
he did? It may be not one. The revelation 
which was then made to him has not been 
superseded by the revelation made to any suc- 
cessor. — 

We see the planet fall, 
And that is all. 

In a review of Sir James Clark Ross' Antarctic 
Voyage of Discovery, there is a passage which 
shows how far a body of men are commonly 
impressed by an object of sublimity, and which 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 457 

is also a good instance of the step from the sub- 
lime to the ridiculous. After describing the 
discovery of the Antarctic Continent, at first 
seen a hundred miles distant over fields of ice, — 
stupendous ranges of mountains from seven and 
eight to twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, 
covered with eternal snow and ice, in solitary 
and inaccessible grandeur, at one time the 
weather being beautifully clear, and the sun 
shining on the icy landscape; a continent 
whose islands only are accessible, and these 
exhibited "not the smallest trace of vegeta- 
tion," only in a few places the rocks protruding 
through their icy covering, to convince the 
beholder that land formed the nucleus, and that 
it was not an iceberg; — the practical British 
reviewer proceeds thus, sticking to his last, 
"On the 22d of January, afternoon, the Ex- 
pedition made the latitude of 74° 20', and by 7 h 
p. m., having ground to believe that they were 
then in a higher southern latitude than had been 
attained by that enterprising seaman, the late 
Captain James Weddel, and therefore higher 
than all their predecessors, an extra allowance 
of grog was issued to the crews as a reward for 
their perseverance." 

Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon 
ourselves any airs on account of our Newtons 
and our Cuviers. We deserve an extra allow- 
ance of grog only. 



458 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind 
to blow through the long corridor of the canal, 
which is here cut straight through the woods, 
and were obliged to resort to our old expedient 
of drawing by a cord. When we reached the Con- 
cord, we were forced to row once more in good 
earnest, with neither wind nor current in our 
favor, but by this time the rawness of the day 
had disappeared, and we experienced the warmth 
of a summer afternoon. This change in the 
weather was favorable to our contemplative 
mood, and disposed us to dream yet deeper at 
our oars, while we floated in imagination further 
down the stream of time, as we had floated 
down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of 
a milder period than had engaged us in the 
morning. Chelmsford and Billerica appeared 
like old English towns, compared with Merri- 
mack and Nashua, and many generations of 
civil poets might have lived and sung here. 

What a contrast between the stern and deso- 
late poetry of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and 
even of Shakspeare and Milton, much more] of 
Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of 
English poetry, like the Greek and Latin before 
it, seems well advanced toward its fall, and 
laden with the fruit and foliage of the season, 
with bright autumnal tints, but soon the winter 
will scatter its myriad clustering and shading 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 459 

leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous 
boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak 
in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the 
impression that the Muse has stooped a little 
in her flight, when we come to the literature of 
civilized eras. Now first we hear of various 
ages and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and 
lyric, and narrative, and didactic; but the 
poetry of runic monuments is of one style, and 
for every age. The bard has in a great measure 
lost the dignity and sacredness of his office. 
Formerly he was called a seer, but now it is 
thought that one man sees as much as another. 
He has no longer the bardic rage, and only con- 
ceives the deed, which he formerly stood ready 
to perform. Hosts of warriors earnest for battle 
could not mistake nor dispense with the ancient 
bard. His lays were heard in the pauses of the 
fight. There was no danger of his being over- 
looked by his contemporaries. But now the 
hero and the bard are of different professions. 
When we come to the pleasant English verse, 
the storms have all cleared away, and it will 
never thunder and lighten more. The poet has 
come within doors, and exchanged the forest and 
crag for the fireside, the hut of the Gael, and 
Stonehenge with its circles of stones, for the 
house of the Englishman. No hero stands at 
the door prepared to break forth into song or 
heroic action, but a homely Englishman, who 



460 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

cultivates the art of poetry. We see the com- 
fortable fireside, and hear the crackling fagots 
in all the verse. 

Notwithstanding the broad humanity of 
Chaucer, and the many social and domestic 
comforts which we meet with in his verse, we 
have to narrow our vision somewhat to consider 
him, as if he occupied less space in the land- 
scape, and did not stretch over hill and valley 
as Ossian does. Yet, seen from the side of 
posterity, as the father of English poetry, 
preceded by a long silence or confusion in 
history, unenlivened by any strain of pure 
melody, we easily come to reverence him. Pass- 
ing over the earlier continental poets, since we 
are bound to the pleasant archipelago of English 
poetry, Chaucer's is the first name after that 
misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can 
detain us long. Indeed, though he represents 
so different a culture and society, he may be 
regarded as in many respects the Homer of the 
English poets. Perhaps he is the youthfullest of 
them all. We return to him as to the purest 
well, the fountain furthest removed from the 
highway of desultory life. He is so natural and 
cheerful, compared with later poets, that we 
might almost regard him as a personification 
of spring. To the faithful reader his muse has 
even given an aspect to his times, and when he 
is fresh from perusing him, they seem related to 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 461 

the golden age. It is still the poetry of youth 
and life, rather than of thought; and though the 
moral vein is obvious and constant, it has not 
yet banished the sun and daylight from his 
verse. The loftiest strains of the muse are, 
for the most part, sublimely plaintive, and not 
a carol as free as nature's. The content which 
the sun shines to celebrate from morning to 
evening, is unsung. The muse solaces herself, 
and is not ravished but consoled. There is a 
catastrophe implied, and a tragic element in all 
our verse, and less of the lark and morning dews, 
than of the nightingale and evening shades. But 
in Homer and Chaucer there is more of the inno- 
cence and serenity of youth, than in the more 
modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not 
Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling 
to this old song, because they still have mo- 
ments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, 
which give them an appetite for more. To the 
innocent there are neither cherubim nor angels. 
At rare intervals we rise above the necessity of 
virtue into an unchangeable morning light, in 
which we have only to live right on and breathe 
the ambrosial air. The Iliad represents no creed 
nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of 
freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on 
native ground, and were autochthones of the 
soil. 

Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary 



462 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

man and a scholar. There were never any 
times so stirring that there were not to be found 
some sedentary still. He was surrounded by the 
din of arms. The battles of Halidon Hill and 
Neville's Cross, and the still more memorable 
battles of Cressy and Poictiers, were fought in 
his youth; but these did not concern our poet 
much, Wickliffe and his reform much more. He 
regarded himself always as one privileged to sit 
and converse with books. He helped to estab- 
lish the literary class. His character as one of 
the fathers of the English language, would 
alone make his works important, even those 
which have little poetical merit. He was as 
simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely 
but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected 
by the court, and had not yet attained to the 
dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar 
service to his country to that which Dante 
rendered to Italy. If Greek sufficeth for Greek, 
and Arabic for Arabian, and Hebrew for Jew, 
and Latin for Latin, then English shall suffice 
for him, for any of these will serve to teach 
truth "right as divers pathes leaden divers folke 
the right waye to Rome." In the Testament of 
Love he writes, "Let then clerkes enditen in 
Latin, for they have the propertie of science, 
and the knowinge in that facultie, and lette 
Frenchmen in their Frenche also enditen their 
queinte termes, for it is kyndely to their mouthes, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 463 

and let us shewe our fantasies in soche wordes 
as we lerneden of our dames tonge." 

He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, 
who has come down to him the natural way, 
through the meagre pastures of Saxon and ante- 
Chaucerian poetry; and yet, so human and wise 
he appears after such diet, that we are liable to 
misjudge him still. In the Saxon poetry extant, 
in the earliest English, and the contemporary 
Scottish poetry, there is less to remind the 
reader of the rudeness and vigor of youth, than 
of the feebleness of a declining age. It is for 
the most part translation or imitation merely, 
with only an occasional and slight tinge of 
poetry, oftentimes the falsehood and exaggera- 
tion of fable, without its imagination to redeem 
it, and we look in vain to find antiquity restored, 
humanized, and made blithe again by some 
natural sympathy between it and the present. 
But Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no 
dust settles on his true passages. It lightens 
along the line, and we are reminded that flowers 
have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts 
beaten, in England. Before the earnest gaze of 
the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually 
drop off, and the original green life is revealed. 
He was a homely and domestic man, and did 
breathe quite as modern men do. 

There is no wisdom that can take place of 
humanity, and we find that in Chaucer. We can 



464 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

expand at last in his breath, and we think that 
we could have been that man's acquaintance. 
He was worthy to be a citizen of England, while 
Petrarch and Boccaccio lived in Italy, and Tell 
and Tamerlane in Switzerland and in Asia, and 
Bruce in Scotland, and Wickliffe, and Gower, 
and Edward the Third, and John of Gaunt, and 
the Black Prince, were his own countrymen as 
well as contemporaries; all stout and stirring 
names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down 
from the preceding century, and the name of 
Dante still possessed the influence of a living 
presence. On the whole, Chaucer impresses us 
as greater than his reputation, and not a little 
like Homer and Shakspeare, for he would have 
held up his head in their company. Among 
early English poets he is the landlord and host, 
and has the authority of such. The affectionate 
mention which succeeding early poets make of 
him, coupling him with Homer and Virgil, is to 
be taken into the account in estimating his 
character and influence. King James and Dun- 
bar of Scotland speak of him with more love and 
reverence than any modern author of his prede- 
cessors of the last century. The same childlike 
relation is without a parallel now. For the most 
part we read him without criticism, for he does 
not plead his own cause, but speaks for his 
readers, and has that greatness of trust and 
reliance which compels popularity. He confides 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 465 

in the reader, and speaks privily with him, keep- 
ing nothing back. And in return the reader has 
great confidence in him, that he tells no lies, and 
reads his story with indulgence, as if it were the 
circumlocution of a child, but often discovers 
afterwards that he has spoken with more direct- 
ness and economy of words than a sage. He is 
never heartless, 

"For first the thing is thought within the hart, 
Er any word out from the mouth astart." 

And so new Was all his theme in those days, that 
he did not have to invent, but only to tell. 

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit. 
The easy height he speaks from in his Prologue 
to the Canterbury Tales, as if he were equal to 
any of the company there assembled, is as good 
as any particular excellence in it. But though 
it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not 
transcendent poetry. For picturesque descrip- 
tions of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel 
in English poetry ; yet it is essentially humorous, 
as the loftiest genius never is. Humor, however 
broad and genial, takes a narrower view than 
enthusiasm. To his own finer vein he added all 
the common wit and wisdom of his time, and 
everywhere in his works his remarkable knowl- 
edge of the world and nice perception of char- 
acter, his rare common sense and proverbial 
wisdom, are apparent. His genius does not soar 



466 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

like Milton's, but is genial and familiar. It 
shows great tenderness and delicacy, but not 
the heroic sentiment. It is only a greater 
portion of humanity with all its weakness. He 
is not heroic, as Raleigh, nor pious, as Herbert, 
nor philosophical, as Shakspeare, but he is the 
child of the English muse, that child which is 
the father of the man. The charm of his poetry 
consists often only in an exceeding naturalness, 
perfect sincerity, with the behavior of a child 
rather than of a man. 

Gentleness and delicacy of character are 
everywhere apparent in his verse. The simplest 
and humblest words come readily to his lips. 
No one can read the Prioress' tale, understanding 
the spirit in which it was written, and in which 
the child sings alma redemptoris mater, or the 
account of the departure of Constance with her 
child upon the sea, in the Man of Lawe's tale, 
without feeling the native innocence and refine- 
ment of the author. Nor can we be mistaken 
respecting the essential purity of his character, 
disregarding the apology of the manners of the 
age. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness, 
which Wordsworth only occasionally approaches, 
but does not equal, are peculiar to him. We are 
tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not 
masculine. It was such a feminineness, how- 
ever, as is rarest to find in woman, though not 
the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to be 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 467 

found at all in woman, but is only the feminine 
in man. 

Sure pure, and genuine, and childlike love of 
Nature is hardly to be found in any poet. 

Chaucer's remarkably trustful and affection- 
ate character appears in his familiar, yet inno- 
cent and reverent, manner of speaking of his 
God. He comes into his thought without any 
false reverence, and with no more parade than 
the zephyr to his ear. If Nature is our mother, 
then God is our father. There is less love and 
simple practical trust in Shakspeare and Milton. 
How rarely in our English tongue do we find 
expressed any affection for God. Certainly, 
there is no sentiment so rare as the love of God. 
Herbert almost alone expresses it, "Ah, my 
dear God!" Our poet uses similar words with 
propriety, and whenever he sees a beautiful 
person, or other object, prides himself on the 
"maistry" of his God. He even recommends 
Dido to be his bride, — 

"if that God that heaven and yearth made, 



Would have a love for beauty and goodnesse, 
And womanhede, trouth, and semeliness." 

But in justification of our praise, we must 
refer to his works themselves; to the Prologue 
to the Canterbury Tales, the account of Genti- 
lesse, the Flower and the Leaf, the stories of 
Griselda, Virginia, Ariadne, and Blanche the 
Dutchesse, and much more of less distinguished 



468 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

merit. There are many poets of more taste and 
better manners, who knew how to leave out 
their dulness, but such negative genius cannot 
detain us long; we shall return to Chaucer still 
with love. Some natures which are really rude 
and ill developed, have yet a higher standard 
of perfection than others which are refined and 
well balanced. Even the clown has taste, 
whose dictates, though he disregards them, are 
higher and purer than those which the artist 
obeys. If we have to wander through many 
dull and prosaic passages in Chaucer, we have 
at least the satisfaction of knowing that it is not 
an artificial dulness, but too easily matched by 
many passages in life. We confess that we feel 
a disposition commonly to concentrate sweets, 
and accumulate pleasures, but the poet may be 
presumed always to speak as a traveller, who 
leads us through a varied scenery, from one 
eminence to another, and it is, perhaps, more 
pleasing, after all, to meet with a fine thought 
in its natural setting. Surely fate has enshrined 
it in these circumstances for some end. Nature 
strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and never 
collects them into heaps. This was the soil it 
grew in, and this the hour it bloomed in; if sun, 
wind, and rain came here to cherish and expand 
the flower, shall not we come here to pluck it? 

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a 
felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 469 

as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most 
have beauty of outline merely, and are striking 
as the form and bearing of a stranger, but true 
verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very 
breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in 
their spirit and fragrance. Much of our poetry 
has the very best manners, but no character. 
It is only an unusual precision and elasticity 
of speech, as if its author had taken, not an 
intoxicating draught, but an electuary. It has 
the distinct outline of sculpture, and chronicles 
an early hour. Under the influence of passion 
all men speak thus distinctly, but wrath is not 
always divine. 

There are two classes of men called poets. 
The one cultivates life, the other art, — one 
seeks food for nutriment, the other for flavor; 
one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the 
palate. There are two kinds of writing, both 
great and rare; one that of genius, or the in- 
spired, the other of intellect and taste, in the 
intervals of inspiration. The former is above 
criticism, always correct, giving the law to 
criticism. It vibrates and pulsates with life 
forever. It is sacred, and to be read with rever- 
ence, as the works of nature are studied. There 
are few instances of a sustained style of this 
kind; perhaps every man has spoken words, 
but the speaker is then careless of the record. 
Such a style removes us out of personal relations 



470 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

with its author, we do not take his words on our 
lips, but his sense into our hearts. It is the 
stream of inspiration, which bubbles out, now 
here, now there, now in this man, now in that. 
It matters not through what ice-crystals it is 
seen, now a fountain, now the ocean stream 
running under ground. It is in Shakspeare, 
Alpheus, in Burns, Arethuse; but ever the 
same. — The other is self-possessed and wise. 
It is reverent of genius, and greedy of inspira- 
tion. It is conscious in the highest and the 
least degree. It consists with the most perfect 
command of the faculties. It dwells in a repose 
as of the desert, and objects are as distinct in 
it as oases or palms in the horizon of sand. The 
train of thought moves with subdued and 
measured step, like a caravan. But the pen is 
only an instrument in its hand, and not instinct 
with life, like a longer arm. It leaves a thin 
varnish or glaze over all its work. The works 
of Goethe furnish remarkable instances of the 
latter. 

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. 
Nothing is considered simply as it lies in the 
lap of eternal beauty, but our thoughts, as well 
as our bodies, must be dressed after the latest 
fashions. Our taste is too delicate and particular. 
It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea 
to his hope. It invites him to adorn his de- 
formities, and not to cast them off by expansion, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 471 

as the tree its bark. We are a people who live 
in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain, 
and drink only light wines, whose teeth are 
easily set on edge by the least natural sour. If 
we had been consulted, the backbone of the 
earth would have been made, not of granite, 
but of Bristol spar. A modern author would 
have died in infancy in a ruder age. But the 
poet is something more than a scald, "a smoother 
and polisher of language;" he is a Cincinnatus 
in literature, and occupies no west end of the 
world. Like the sun, he will indifferently select 
his rhymes, and with a liberal taste weave into 
his verse the planet and the stubble. 

In these old books the stucco has long since 
crumbled away, and we read what was sculp- 
tured in the granite. They are rude and mas- 
sive in their proportions, rather than smooth 
and delicate in their finish. The workers in 
stone polish only their chimney ornaments, but 
their pyramids are roughly done. There is a 
soberness in a rough aspect, as of unhewn 
granite, which addresses a depth in us, but a 
polished surface hits only the ball of the eye. 
The true finish is the work of time and the use 
to which a thing is put. The elements are still 
polishing the pyramids. Art may varnish and 
gild, but it can do no more. A work of genius 
is rough-hewn from the first, because it antici- 
pates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained 



472 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

polish, which still appears when fragments are 
broken off, an essential quality of its substance. 
Its beauty is at the same time its strength, and 
it breaks with a lustre. 

The great poem must have the stamp of 
greatness as well as its essence. The reader 
easily goes within the shallowest contemporary 
poetry, and informs it with all the life and 
promise of the day, as the pilgrim goes within 
the temple, and hears the faintest strains of the 
worshippers; but it will have to speak to pos- 
terity, traversing these deserts, through the 
ruins of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and 
beauty of its proportions. 



But here on the stream of the Concord, where 
we have all the while been bodily, Nature, who 
is superior to all styles and ages, is now, with 
pensive face, composing her poem Autumn, with 
which no work of man will bear to be compared. 

In summer we live out of doors, and have 
only impulses and feelings, which are all for 
action, and must wait commonly for the still- 
ness and longer nights of autumn and wholly 
new life, which no man has lived; that even 
this earth was made for more mysterious and 
nobler inhabitants than men and women. In 
the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals 
to other mansions than those which we occupy, 
not far off geographically. — 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 473 

"There is a place beyond that flaming hill, 

From whence the stars their thin appearance shed, 
A place beyond all place, where never ill, 
Nor impure thought was ever harbored." 

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not 
his Father but his Mother stirs within him, 
and he becomes immortal with her immortality. 
From time to time she claims kindredship with 
us, and some globule from her veins steals up 
into our own. 

I am the autumnal sun, 
With autumn gales my race is run; 
When will the hazel put forth its flowers, 
Or the grape ripen under my bowers? 
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon, 
Turn my mid-night into mid-noon? 

I am all sere and yellow, 

And to my core mellow. 
The mast is dropping within my woods, 
The winter is lurking within my moods, 
And the rustling of the withered leaf 
Is the constant music of my grief. 

To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke 
in prose : — 

The moon no longer reflects the day, but 
rises to her absolute rule, and the husbandman 
and hunter acknowledge her for their mistress. 
Asters and golden-rods reign along the way, and 
the life-ever-lasting withers not. The fields are 
reaped and shorn of their pride, but an inward 
verdure still crowns them. The thistle scatters 



474 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

its down on the pool, and yellow leaves clothe 
the vine, and naught disturbs the serious life of 
men. But behind the sheaves, and under the 
sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers 
have not gathered, the true harvest of the year, 
which it bears for ever, annually watering and 
maturing it, and man never severs the stalk 
which bears this palatable fruit. 

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural 
life, round which the vine clings, and which the 
elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate 
it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world 
remains veiled to him. He needs not only to 
be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of 
earth. Who shall conceive what kind of roof 
the heavens might extend over him, what seasons 
minister to him, and what employment dignify 
his life! Only the convalescent raise the veil of 
nature. An immortality in his life would confer 
immortality on his abode. The winds should be 
his breath, the seasons his moods, and he should 
impart of his serenity to Nature herself. But 
such as we know him he is ephemeral like the 
scenery that surrounds him, and does not 
aspire to an enduring existence. When we come 
down into the distant village, visible from the 
mountain top, the nobler inhabitants with 
whom we peopled it have departed, and left 
only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 475 

imagination of poets which puts those brave 
speeches into the mouths of their heroes. They 
may feign that Cato's last words were 

"The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all 
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars; 
And now will view the Gods' state and the stars," 

but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny 
of common men. What is this heaven which 
they expect, if it is no better than they ex- 
pect? Are they prepared for a better than 
they can now imagine? Here or nowhere is our 
heaven. — 

"Although we see celestial bodies move 
Above the earth, the earth we till and love." 

We can conceive of nothing more fair than 
something which we have experienced. "The 
remembrance of youth is a sigh." We linger 
in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, 
and they are half forgotten ere we have learned 
the language. We have need to be earth-born 
as well as heaven-born, yqyevels, as was said of 
the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they. 
There have been heroes for whom this world 
seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had 
at last succeeded; whose daily life was the stuff 
of which our dreams are made, and whose pres- 
sence enhanced the beauty and ampleness of 
Nature herself. Where they walked, 

"Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit 
Purpureo: Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt." 



476 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Here a more copious air invests the fields, and 
clothes with purple light; and they know their 
own sun and their own stars." We love to hear 
some men speak, though we hear not what they 
say; the very air they breathe is rich and per- 
fumed, and the sound of their voices falls on 
the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling 
of the fire. They stand many deep. They have 
the heavens for their abettors, as those who 
have never stood from under them, and they 
look at the stars with an answering ray. Their 
eyes are like glow-worms, and their motions 
graceful and flowing, as if a place were already 
found for them, like rivers flowing through 
valleys. The distinctions of morality, of right 
and wrong, sense and nonsense, are petty, and 
have lost their significance, beside these pure 
primeval natures. When I consider the clouds 
stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, 
frowning with darkness, or glowing with downy 
light, or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, 
like the battlements of a city in the heavens, 
their grandeur appears thrown away on the 
meanness of my employment; the drapery is 
altogether too rich, for such poor acting. I am 
hardly worthy to be a suburban dweller outside 
those walls. 

"Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 477 

With our music we would fain challenge 
transiently another and finer sort of intercourse 
than our daily toil permits. The strains come 
back to us amended in the echo, as when a friend 
reads our verse. Why have they so painted the 
fruits, and freighted them with such fragrance 
as to satisfy a more than animal appetite? 

"I asked the schoolman, his advice was free, 
But scored me out too intricate a way." 

These things imply, perchance, that we live on 
the verge of another and purer realm, from 
which these odors and sounds are wafted over 
to us. The borders of our plot are set with 
flowers, whose seeds were blown from more 
Elysian fields adjacent. They are the pot-herbs 
of the gods. Some fairer fruits and sweeter 
fragrances wafted over to us, betray another 
realm's vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, 
and there is the abutment of the rainbow's arch. 

A finer race and finer fed 
Feast and revel o'er our head, 
And we titmen are only able 
To catch the fragments from their table. 
Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits, 
While we consume the pulp and roots. 
What are the moments that we stand 
Astonished on the Olympian land! 

We need pray for no higher heaven than the 
pure senses can furnish, a 'purely sensuous life. 
Our present senses are but the rudiments of 
what they are destined to become. We are 



478 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and 
without smell or taste or feeling. Every gener- 
ation makes the discovery, that its divine vigor 
has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty 
misapplied and debauched. The ears were 
made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont 
to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The 
eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as 
they are now put to and worn out by, but to 
behold beauty now invisible. May we not see 
God? Are we to be put off and amused in this 
life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not 
Nature, rightly read, that of which she is com- 
monly taken to be the symbol merely? When 
the common man looks into the sky, which he 
has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross 
than the earth, and with reverence speaks of 
"the Heavens," but the seer will in the same 
sense speak of "the Earths," and his Father who 
is in them. "Did not he that made that which 
is within, make that which is without also?" 
What is it, then, to educate but to develop these 
divine germs called the senses? for individuals 
and states to deal magnanimously with the rising 
generation, leading it not into temptation, — 
not teach the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to 
profanity? But where is the instructed teacher? 
Where are the normal schools? 

A Hindoo sage said, "As a dancer having 
exhibited herself to the spectator, desists from 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 479 

the dance, so does Nature desist, having mani- 
fested herself to soul. — Nothing, in my 
opinion, is more gentle than Nature; once 
aware of having been seen, she does not again 
expose herself to the gaze of soul." 

It is easier to discover another such a new 
world as Columbus did, than to go within one 
fold of this which we appear to know so well; 
the land is lost sight of, the compass varies, and 
mankind mutiny; and still history accumulates 
like rubbish before the portals of nature. But 
there is only necessary a moment's sanity and 
sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature 
behind the ordinary, in which we have only 
some vague preemption right and western re- 
serve as yet. We live on the outskirts of that 
region. Carved wood, and floating boughs, 
and sunset skies, are all that we know of it. 
We are not to be imposed on by the longest 
spell of weather. Let us not, my friends, be 
wheedled and cheated into good behavior to 
earn the salt of our eternal porridge, whoever 
they are that attempt it. Let us wait a little, 
and not purchase any clearing here, trusting 
that richer bottoms will soon be put up. It is 
but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my 
roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch 
of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a 
straw, which reminded me of myself. — 



480 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 

A bunch of violets without their roots, 
And sorrel intermixed, 
Encircled by a wisp of straw 
Once coiled about their shoots, 
The law 
By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay which Time clutched from out 
Those fair Elysian fields, 
With weeds and broken stems, in haste, 
Doth make the rabble rout 
That waste 
The day he yields. 

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, 
Drinking my juices up, 
With no root in the land 

To keep my branches green, 
But stand 
In a bare cup. 

Some tender buds were left upon my stem 
In mimicry of life, 
But ah ! the children will not know, 
Till time has withered them, 
The wo 
With which they're rife. 

But now I see I was not plucked for naught, 
And after in life's vase 
Of glass set while I might survive, 
But by a kind hand brought 
Alive 
To a strange place. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 481 

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, 
And by another year, 
Such as God knows, with freer air, 
More fruits and fairer flowers 
Will bear, 
While I droop here. 

This world has many rings, like Saturn, and 
we live now on the outmost of them all. None 
can say deliberately that he inhabits the same 
sphere, or is contemporary with, the flower 
which his hands have plucked, and though his 
feet may seem to crush it, inconceivable spaces 
and ages separate them, and perchance there is 
no danger that he will hurt it. What after all 
do the botanists know? Our lives should go 
between the lichen and the bark. The eye may 
see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are 
still being born, and have as yet but a dim 
vision of sea and land, sun, moon and stars, and 
shall not see clearly till after nine days at least. 
That is a pathetic inquiry among travellers and 
geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It 
is not near where they think it is. When a 
thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must 
be the place it occupied! 

The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me 
in the same way as do those faint revelations of 
the Real which are vouchsafed to men from time 
to time, or rather from eternity to eternity. 
When I remember the history of that faint light 
in our firmament, which we call Venus, which 



482 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

ancient men regarded, and which most modern 
men still regard, as a bright spark attached to a 
hollow sphere revolving about our earth, but 
which we have discovered to be another world in 
itself, — how Copernicus, reasoning long and 
patiently about the matter, predicted con- 
fidently concerning it, before yet the telescope 
had been invented, that if ever men came to 
see it more clearly than they did then, they 
would discover that it had phases like our moon, 
and that within a century after his death the 
telescope was invented, and that prediction veri- 
fied, by Galileo, — I am not without hope that 
we may, even here and now, obtain some accurate 
information concerning that Other World 
which the instinct of mankind has so long 
predicted. Indeed, all that we call science, as 
well as all that we call poetry, is a particle of 
such information, accurate as far as it goes, 
though it be but to the confines of the truth. If 
we can reason so accurately, and with such 
wonderful confirmation of our reasoning, re- 
specting so-called material objects and events 
infinitely removed beyond the range of our 
natural vision, so that the mind hesitates to 
trust its calculations even when they are con- 
firmed by observation, why may not our specu- 
lations penetrate as far into the immaterial 
starry system, of which the former is but the 
outward and visible type? Surely, we are 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 483 

provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate 
the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, 
as these outward are to penetrate the material 
universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, 
Christ, Shakspeare, Swedenborg, — these are 
some of our astronomers. 

There are perturbations in our orbits pro- 
duced by the influence of outlying spheres, and 
no astronomer has ever yet calculated the ele- 
ments of that undiscovered world which pro- 
duces them. I perceive in the common train of 
my thoughts a natural and uninterrupted se- 
quence, each implying the next, or, if interrup- 
tion occurs it is occasioned by a new object 
being presented to my senses. But a steep, and 
sudden, and by these means unaccountable 
transition, is that from a comparatively narrow 
and partial, what is called common sense view 
of things, to an infinitely expanded and liberat- 
ing one, from seeing things as men describe them, 
to seeing them as men cannot describe them. 
This implies a sense which is not common, but 
rare in the wisest man's experience; which is 
sensible or sentient of more than common. 

In what inclosures does the astronomer loiter! 
His skies are shoal; and imagination, like a 
thirsty traveller, pants to be through their 
desert. The roving mind impatiently bursts 
the fetters of astronomical orbits, like cobwebs 
in a corner of its universe, and launches itself to 



484 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

where distance fails to follow, and law, such as 
science has discovered, grows weak and weary. 
The mind knows a distance and a space of 
which all those sums combined do not make a 
unit of measure, — the interval between that 
which appears and that which is. I know that 
there are many stars, I know that they are far 
enough off, bright enough, steady enough in 
their orbits, — but what are they all worth? 
They are more waste land in the West, — star 
territory, — to be made slave States, perchance, 
if we colonize them. I have interest but for 
six feet of star, and that interest is transient. 
Then farewell to all ye bodies, such as I have 
known ye. 

Every man, if he is wise, will stand on such 
bottom as will sustain him, and if one gravitates 
downward more strongly than another, he will 
not venture on those meads where the latter 
walks securely, but rather leave the cranberries 
which grow there unraked by himself. Per- 
chance, some spring a higher freshet will float 
them within his reach, though they may be 
watery and frost-bitten by that time. Such 
shrivelled berries I have seen in many a poor 
man's garret, aye, in many a church bin and state 
coffer, and with a little water and heat they 
swell again to their original size and fairness, 
and added sugar enough, stead mankind for 
sauce to this world's dish. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 485 

What is called common sense is excellent in 
its department, and as invaluable as the virtue 
of conformity in the army and navy, — for 
there must be subordination, — but uncommon 
sense, that sense which is common only to the 
wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more 
rare. Some aspire to excellence in the subordi- 
nate department, and may God speed them. 
What Fuller says of masters of colleges is uni- 
versally applicable, that "a little alloy of dul- 
ness in a master of a college makes him fitter to 
manage secular affairs." 

"He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief 
Because he wants it, hath a true belief; 
And he that grieves because his grief 's so small, 
Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all." 

Or be encouraged by this other poet's strain. 

"By them went Fido marshal of the field: 

Weak was his mother when she gave him day; 
And he at first a sick and weakly child, 
As e'er with tears welcomed the sunny ray; 

Yet when more years afford more growth and might, 
A champion stout he was, and puissant knight, 
As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright. 

"Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand; 

Stops and turns back the sun's impetuous course; 
Nature breaks Nature's laws at his command; 
No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force; 
Events to come yet many ages hence, 
He present makes, by wondrous prescience; 
Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense." 



486 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Yesterday, at dawn," says Hafiz, "God de- 
livered me from all worldly affliction; and 
amidst the gloom of night presented me with 
the water of immortality." 

In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah, occurs 
this sentence. "The eagle of the immaterial 
soul of Shaikh Sadi shook from his plumage 
the dust of his body." 

Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward 
to find some autumnal work to do, and help on 
the revolution of the seasons. Perhaps Nature 
would condescend to make use of us even with- 
out our knowledge, as when we help to scatter 
her seeds in our walks, and carry burrs and 
cockles on our clothes from field to field. 

All things are current found 
On earthly ground, 
Spirits and elements 
Have their descents. 

Night and day, year on year, 
High and low, far and near, 
These are our own aspects, 
These are our own regrets. 

Ye gods of the shore, 
Who abide evermore, 
I see your far headland, 
Stretching on either hand; 

I hear the sweet evening sounds 
From your undecaying grounds; 
Cheat me no more with time, 
Take me to your clime. 




Rowing Homezvard 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 487 

As it grew later in the afternoon, and we 
rowed leisurely up the gentle stream, shut in 
between fragrant and blooming banks, where 
we had first pitched our tent, and drew nearer 
to the fields where our lives had passed, we 
seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in 
the south-west horizon. The sun was just 
setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so rich 
a sunset as would never have ended but for 
some reason unknown to men, and to be marked 
with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll 
of time. Though the shadows of the hills were 
beginning to steal over the stream, the whole 
river valley undulated with mild light, purer 
and more memorable than the noon. For so 
day bids farewell even to solitary vales unin- 
habited by man. Two blue-herons, ardea he- 
rodias, with their long and slender limbs relieved 
against the sky, were seen travelling high over 
our heads, — their lofty and silent flight, as they 
were wending their way at evening, surely not 
to alight in any marsh on the earth's surface, 
but, perchance, on the other side of our atmo- 
sphere, a symbol for the ages to study, whether 
impressed upon the sky, or sculptured amid the 
hieroglyphics of Egypt. Bound to some north- 
ern meadow, they held on their stately, station- 
ary flight, like the storks in the picture, and dis- 
appeared at length behind the clouds. Dense 
flocks of blackbirds were winging their way 



488 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

along the river's course, as. if on a short evening 
pilgrimage to some shrine of theirs, or to cele- 
brate so fair a sunset. 

"Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night 
Hastes darkly to imprison on his way, 
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright 
Of what's yet left thee of life's wasting day: 
Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn, 
And twice it is not given thee to be born." 

The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure 
and in a contemplative mood; but the farmer's 
boy only whistled the more thoughtfully as he 
drove his cows home from pasture, and the 
teamster refrained from cracking his whip, and 
guided his team with a subdued voice. The last 
vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and 
as we rowed silently along with our backs toward 
home through the darkness, only a few stars being 
visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in 
thought, or in silence listened to the monotonous 
sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental music, 
suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of 
her dimly lighted halls; 

"Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles," 

and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars. 

As we looked up in silence to those distant 
lights, we were reminded that it was a rare 
imagination which first taught that the stars 
are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit 
on mankind. It is recorded in the Chronicle of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 489 

Bernaldez, that in Columbus's first voyage the 
natives "pointed towards the heavens, making 
signs that they believed that there was all 
power and holiness." We have reason to be 
grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly 
answer to the ideal in man. The stars are dis- 
tant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring 
as our fairest and most memorable experiences. 
"Let the immortal depth of your soul lead you, 
but earnestly extend your eyes upwards." 

As the truest society approaches always 
nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech 
finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all 
men, at all times, and in all places. She is when 
we hear inwardly, sound when we hear out- 
wardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is 
her visible framework and foil. All sounds are 
her servants and purveyors, proclaiming not 
only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, 
and earnestly to be sought after. They are so 
far akin to Silence, that they are but bubbles 
on her surface, which straightway burst, an 
evidence of the strength and prolificness of the 
under-current; a faint utterance of silence, and 
then only agreeable to our auditory nerves 
when they contrast themselves with and relieve 
the former. In proportion as they do this, and 
are heighteners and intensifies of the Silence, 
they are harmony and purest melody. 



490 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel tc 
all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to 
our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as 
after disappointment; that background which 
the painter may not daub, be he master or 
bungler, and which, however awkward a figure 
we may have made in the foreground, remains 
ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity 
can assail, no personality disturb us. 

The orator puts off his individuality, and is 
then most eloquent when most silent. He 
listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along 
with his audience. Who has not hearkened to 
Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking 
trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and 
Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do 
well to consult, nor will they be balked by an 
ambiguous answer. For through Her all reve- 
lations have been made, and just in proportion 
as men have consulted her oracle within, they 
have obtained a clear insight, and their age has 
been marked as an enlightened one. But as 
often as they have gone gadding abroad to a 
strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age 
has been dark and leaden. Such were garrulous 
and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, 
but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is 
ever sounding and resounding in the ears of men. 

A good book is the plectrum with which our 
else silent lyres are struck. We not unfrequently 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 491 

refer the interest which belongs to our own un- 
written sequel, to the written and comparatively 
lifeless body of the work. Of all books this 
sequel is the most indispensable part. It should 
be the author's aim to say once and emphatically, 
"He said," "e<K" I This is the most the book 
maker can attain to. If he make his volume a 
mole whereon the waves of Silence may break, it 
is well. 

It were vain for me to endeavor to interpret 
the Silence. She cannot be done into English. 
For six thousand years men have translated 
her with what fidelity belonged to each, and still 
she is little better than a sealed book. A man 
may run on confidently for a time, thinking he 
has her under his thumb, and shall one day ex- 
haust her, but he too must at last be silent, and 
men remark only how brave a beginning he 
made; for when he at length dives into her, so 
vast is the disproportion of the told to the un- 
told, that the former will seem but the bubble 
on the surface where he disappeared. Never- 
theless, we will go on, like those Chinese cliff 
swallows, feathering our nests with the froth 
which may one day be bread of life to such as 
dwell by the seashore. 

We had made about fifty miles this day with 
sail and oar, and now, far in the evening, our 
boat was grating against the bulrushes of its 



492 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

native port, and its keel recognized the Concord 
mud, where some semblance of its outline was 
still preserved in the flattened flags which had 
scarce yet erected themselves since our depar- 
ture; and we leaped gladly on shore, drawing it 
up, and fastening it to the wild apple tree, 
whose stem still bore the mark which its chain 
had worn in the chafing of the spring freshets. 



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